Meek’s Cutoff feels something like an oddity in the western genre, and I mean that in the best way possible. There’s no denying the western influences clearly embedded in its cinematic DNA; Kelly Reichardt’s fourth feature very much draws from that celluloid tradition, but she’s not telling a story about cowboys and Indians or marshals … Continue reading
“Are we in a rush or something?” It’s one of the earliest pieces of dialogue in Max Winkler’s debut picture, Ceremony, and I don’t know if he meant any irony by the statement but after an hour and twenty minutes that little quip perfectly encapsulates my feelings on the film. Winkler’s in a hurry to … Continue reading
John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard opens on what appears to be an obvious set-up at first glance: a car full of teens hurtling along the winding and narrow roads of Connemara, in the process of intoxication through the employment of various mediums, surely won’t be suffered to remain in drive for long in a story … Continue reading
Drive is cool; there’s no way around it. In point of fact I don’t know if there’s a better way to describe Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest film other than in terms of its inherent, blatant coolness, or more accurately a more appropriate way. “Cool” is what Drive embodies in every single detail, minute or otherwise; … Continue reading
I’d consider it a party foul if Michael Greenspan didn’t splurge on a high-end fruit basket for Adrien Brody once Wrecked, their 2011 attempt at aping 127 Hours, made it to post. Well-intentioned, and certainly lovely to look at, the director’s first feature-length effort lacks much of anything by way of that genre-essential trait, tension; … Continue reading
Last year, Matthew Vaughn’s Kick Ass posed the question, “What would happen if a regular, everyday person put on a costume and fought crime?” rather succinctly– they’d get beaten half to death– before going off the rails of reality and into full-blown superhero movie mode, as though to underscore the impossibility of the film’s own … Continue reading
Black Death‘s biggest draw might be Christopher Smith, director of such horror fare as the well-meaning but woefully forthcoming Triangle, the humorous and gory Severance, and Creep— which I haven’t caught myself. Smith’s latest shows roots in the horror genre, to be sure, but Black Death is the kind of film that wants to play … Continue reading
During the last act of the felicitously named Hobo With a Shotgun, Rutger Hauer’s eponymous vagrant delivers a speech to a hospital nursery filled with babies that may set your meta-sense tingling. There’s a feeling that Hauer’s almost talking about himself and his own life decisions which have led him to star in a brisk, … Continue reading
Writing a review for 50/50 presents something of a challenge to me. On one hand, I want to rave to high heavens about it; on the other, I don’t want to oversell it. Every word I write, therefore, walks a fine line between setting up unfair expectations that the film can’t hope to meet and … Continue reading
Is Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives a realist movie with surreal aspects, or a surreal movie with realist aspects? For all the queries the film poses about living and dying, the sixth directorial feature of Thailand’s Apichatpong Weereasethakul (you can just call him “Joe”, though), the previous question winds up being its … Continue reading
13 Assassins falls into a category of films woefully burdened by an inescapable family resemblance that dogs their existence on one level or another. In the case of the latest offering from Japanese shock filmmaker, Takashi Miike, anyone who’s heard of Kurosawa can trace the film’s lineage back to 1954, the release year of the … Continue reading
Leave it to the incomparable Werner Herzog to take the experience of filming chicken-scratch paintings on the walls of a long-sealed cave in the mountains of southern France and turn it into a rumination on the aspirations of humanity and an examination of art’s purpose throughout the history of our species. Herzog, the eccentric and … Continue reading
I like to think that modern audiences understand and accept that the performers, filmmakers, and other media personalities they admire and support are actual people underneath the images they project. So in theory, a movie like Rodman Flender’s Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop should feel like a no-brainer, and the sight of the titular beloved comedian … Continue reading
To call Captain America: The First Avenger “perfect” would be something of an overstatement– the opening scene serves absolutely no appreciable purpose whatsoever for the movie’s narrative, and the denouement gets a little choppy and falters in set-up and execution. The unsavory frames of film that bookend what you could call Joe Johnston’s masterpiece (with … Continue reading
Unsurprisingly, the second part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is one massive climax from start to finish. What else did anyone expect? Part one heroically bit the bullet and allowed itself to bear the weight of the novel’s filler, martyr-like, so that part two could act like an unrelenting, two-hour-and-change action scene in … Continue reading
One thing can be said for certain about Rubber, the sophomore film of French director/record producer Quentin Dupieux (a.k.a. Mr. Oizo)– you will believe that a tire (named, the post-credits inform us, Robert) can gain sentience and use its newfound telekinetic powers to go on a bloody rampage through a small desert town while pursuing … Continue reading
It’s hard to talk about the New Wave of South Korean cinema without at the very least touching on revenge pictures. Blame Chan-wook Park; his vengeance trilogy represents three of the best-received South Korean pictures released during the movement’s surge in the early-to-mid 2000s, and Park himself stands out as arguably the most talked about … Continue reading
I’m typically not the person who finds himself in admiration of “found footage” movies; more so than most titles that fit under that umbrella, they’re more slavishly devoted to a formula that doesn’t tend to vary from entry to entry. Naturally, that footage has to get found at some point, so we have a much … Continue reading
A review for Midnight in Paris requires no preamble simply because it’s the best movie Woody Allen has made in years, which alone should be sufficient reason to watch it in light of the director’s limp and joyless recent output. But a review that begins with the suggestion that Midnight in Paris far exceeds the … Continue reading
J.J. Abrams is short of a single meticulously crafted script before he creates his masterpiece; he knows how to make an entertaining, fulfilling movie that resonates with his audiences, but each of his cinematic endeavors has been hamstrung by virtue of lacking a highly polished, impeccable piece of writing that elevates his work from “good” … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 