I absolutely adored this mesmerizing, eerie, and breathtakingly composed film– inasmuch as something this unsettling can be adored– and it’s all thanks to some top-drawer editing and a startlingly assured debut by Elizabeth Olsen. Continue reading »
Filed under 2011 films …
Review: Contagion, 2011, dir. Steven Soderbergh
I’ve said before that Steven Soderbergh is a genre chameleon; if this year’s Haywire doesn’t unequivocally prove that, then last year’s Contagion should, and soundly at that. Contagion may not be a straight genre film in the way that the multi-faceted filmmaker’s bone-snapping arthouse action film is, but it nonetheless exists as a synthesis of numerous filmmaking categories– essentially, … Continue reading »
Review: Outrage, 2011, dir. Takeshi Kitano
For the last decade, Japanese maestro Takeshi Kitano has taken a break from the Yakuza films that have come to strongly identify his entire body of work, turning to projects ranging from Zatoichi to his surreal and allegedly autobiographical trilogy of pictures starting with Takeshis and ending with 2008′s Achilles and the Tortoise. But ten … Continue reading »
Review: Take Shelter, 2011, dir. Jeff Nichols
Part of me wants to classify Jeff Nichols’ sophomore effort at least partially as horror. Not in the exploitative slashing sense, of course, but more in the vein of Polanski or Friedkin. The aptly dubbed Take Shelter blends highbrow artistic filmmaking and storytelling with moments of utterly numbing terror– apocalyptic visions revolving around monstrous storms … Continue reading »
Review: Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey, 2011, dir. Constance Marks
Kevin Clash could more accurately be described as a wizard than a puppeteer; it’s one thing to simply animate a construct made of cloth and various materials, and quite another to bring them to startlingly expressive life. Tangibly that only indicates Clash’s absolute command of his craft, but speaking more to abstraction it’s representative of … Continue reading »
Review: The Artist, 2011, dir. Michel Hazanavicius
Observing a highly-lauded film often proves to be a challenging experience. Most film writers are well aware of the weight of expectations when it comes to honestly confronting their feelings on a movie that’s been fed to them through the Internet hype-machine and reassembled as something perhaps greater than it is in actuality. There are, … Continue reading »
Review: Beginners, 2011, dir. Mike Mills
To a point, Beginners is somewhat opaque. The film doesn’t boast a complex narrative– even when it’s operating at full non-linear capacity– but the devices used to serve the story are, occasionally, perplexing. Parts of Beginners occur in the thoughts of its protagonist, Oliver (Ewan McGregor), who in his head contrasts the way the world and people … Continue reading »
Review: Cowboys & Aliens, 2011, dir. Jon Favreau
It’s amazing that in a single year we saw the release of four alien invasion films, and of that quartet only one turned out to be any good. How do three different directors miss the mark making variations on the same type of movie? Being kind, Super 8 only falls off the rails in its last … Continue reading »
Review: Senna, 2011, dir. Asif Kapadia
As documentaries go, Senna may be best characterized as unabashedly partisan. From the moment the film begins, director Asif Kapadia clearly wants us to come to root for Ayrton Senna, the eponymous and deceased Brazilian Formula One racer. Kapadia’s concerned little and less with objectivity. He’s an admirer, and largely his film rides on the hope … Continue reading »
Review: Arthur, 2011, dir. Jason Winer
The biggest crime committed by Jason Winer’s remake of Arthur, the 1981 Dudley Moore classic, is failing to justify its own existence. Winer clearly either isn’t particularly fond of that staple Moore picture, or he didn’t find inspiration in it; Arthur just goes through the motions, following beat after beat and sequencing from one moment to … Continue reading »
