While the Independent Film Festival Boston doesn’t end until this Wednesday, my time out at the Somerville and Brattle theaters has run out– but I’ve got a handful of reviews up over at Go See Talk and two more in the tank that I’ll post in the next couple of days! I had a blast … Continue reading
How about that time when I wrote about how sex in Game of Thrones has consequences? If I didn’t convince you with my argument the first time around, no doubt the final scene in Garden of Bones did, though both the fourth and third episodes of the season both do nothing to undermine that running theme. Is that slowly … Continue reading
By now it’s indisputable that Armando Iannucci has the market cornered on fly-on-the-wall, documentary-style political satire. The man behind not only 2009’s outstanding In the Loop as well as 2005’s BBC Four program The Thick of It, Iannucci has essentially built a career on both the style and content that characterize the vast majority of his output– … Continue reading
…and coincidentally, so does my coverage of the festival! But you won’t get it on A Constant Visual Feast. I’ll be posting my full reviews for the films I watch over at Go-See-Talk, so if you want to check out my thoughts on the festival as well as my reviews of the films I catch, take … Continue reading
The Raid kicks ass. I almost want to leave the review at those four lone words; they convey all of the meaning needed to either sell you on The Raid or inform you that your time would be better spent elsewhere. But I can’t get away with that sort of smirking plebian criticism, and besides, … Continue reading
If the pilot episode of HBO’s Girls tells us anything, it’s that the show– sprung from the mind of Lena Dunham– has a lot of potential. That’s a fairly inarticulate expression of my opinion of the show, inasmuch as it’s an incredibly broad conclusion, but that’s actually a fairly loaded statement. What kind of potential … Continue reading
Imagine if everyone stopped filming on celluloid tomorrow and the entire world of cinema went full-on digital. Production and employment of 35mm film ceased full-stop and IMAX’s 65mm format vanished into thin air. What would that be like? How would that affect dollars and cents, the financial side of the industry? How would that impact … Continue reading
With Cabin in the Woods, Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon have crafted the new yardstick by which all horror films released in its wake will be judged. That analogy’s somewhat mild and unseasoned. More accurately, they’ve saturation bombed the genre with barb-filled ordnance wrapped up in one enormous love letter, launching a payload containing their affections … Continue reading
Andy Hart over at Fandango Groovers has a simple question for all of us movie lovers: what’s the best year in film? Or, maybe more easily answered, what’s your favorite year in film? I being such a notoriously indecisive person had to wrestle with these two challenges– with very nearly a century of film to … Continue reading
You may remember some weeks back that I happened into an opportunity to participate in a round table interview the effervescent Joseph Kahn regarding his second feature film, the multi-genre mind-bending slasher-time travel-teen drama-comedy-kung fu-cultural commentary bonanza, Detention. Well, it’s Friday the 13th– and that means that not only am I barring my doors to keep … Continue reading
Remember last week when I theorized that each episode of Game of Thrones‘ second season, following the pilot, would probably place more focus on a smaller number of characters? Seems like time’s proving me right. Maybe that’s not a boast exactly, since it’s just plain old logical, but expect this to be the routine with each … Continue reading
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
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
Brave is still a couple of months away yet, but that just means it’s getting to that time where Pixar really ramps up its marketing for its latest film. By now you’ve all likely seen the trailers, the most recent of which prominently display the great King Fergus (Billy Connolly) in all his glory, including his … Continue reading
I’m going to do something a little bit different with this week’s Criterion File– I’m splitting it up into two segments. Why? Simple: the two films I selected for this installment both gave me an enormous amount to talk about, and not just on individual levels, or within the context of themselves, either. On the … Continue reading
It’s exactly three weeks until 2012’s Boston Independent Film Festival kicks off, and to that end the slate of films to be shown at the fest has been released. There’s a great amount of range here, from horror/exploitation flicks like V/H/S and Headhunters to new Todd Solondz as well as the latest from Bobcat Goldthwait, God Bless America; that’s … Continue reading
(Note: I feel like tagging this with spoiler warnings is unnecessary, but just in case, this is going to be very spoiler heavy. If you haven’t finished S1, stay away.) Ready for more political maneuvering, martial strategy, medieval barbarism, societal division, and steadily burgeoning elements of high fantasy? What may be somewhat startling about the … Continue reading
Well, wouldnt’ you know it– I liked podcasting with Brian and Dan so much earlier in March that I just had to do it again. This time around, Brian and I are joined by Sam Fragoso of Duke & The Movies; we’re also talking about The Hunger Games, which I really liked and which … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 