Before I met my wife, my longest relationship lasted a span of only three months. I wasn’t afraid of commitment; I was too committed too early. I fell fast and hard. Every time. But that doesn’t mean I never went through the typical relationship bumps in the road. I fought with plenty of exes about …
Maggie’s Plan Written by Rebecca Miller Directed by Rebecca Miller USA, 2015 Is it sexist, or at the very least unfair, to compare Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan to the works of Noah Baumbach and Woody Allen, but with a tone of derision? Either way, it’s hard to divorce Miller’s manic wit and preoccupation with middle-class …
Amidst the chaos and uncertainty of an indifferent universe, virtuoso pianist Seymour Bernstein found order in his music. Ethan Hawke’s new documentary, Seymour: An Introduction, follows the reclusive Bernstein as he prepares for his first live performance in 35 years. Through powerful ruminations on his craft, we glimpse the inner workings of an artist whose love for music permeates every fiber of his being. Hawke gives us a terrific primer on one of classical music’s most talented and confounding figures.
Cymbeline is director Michael Almereyda’s second Shakespeare adaptation set in modern day, his last being 2000’s Hamlet, also starring Ethan Hawke. The Bard’s late work tragedy, previously set in the Royal Court of Olde England, receives a face-lift, updated to a war between the Roman police force and the Briton Motorcycle Club ran by Cymbeline (Ed Harris). The King trades in a crown for an Uzi and a leather jacket as a drug kingpin troubled by familial strife. His second wife (the serpentine Mila Jovovich) despises Cymbeline’s daughter, Imogen (Dakota Johnson, proving she has acting chops that viewers may not find in Fifty Shades of Grey), for not marrying her son, Cloten (Anton Yelchin). In secret, Imogen has pledged herself to Posthumus (Penn Badgley), much to Cymbeline’s displeasure.
10. Waterworld Directed by: Kevin Reynolds It could be the flop of all flops. At the time, “Waterworld” was the most expensive film ever made. Starring Kevin Costner, “Waterworld” is a science-fiction/fantasy film taking place roughly 500 years after the polar ice caps melted in the beginning of the 21st century, effectively covering the entire …
Walking into Predestination clean is perhaps the best advice to offer any cinephile willing to hunt down this likely future cult classic. It would be easy to just describe Predestination as Looper tossed in a blender with Minority Report, but the Spierig Brothers are going in a very different direction here. A direction that may lose a few viewers along the way.
Most filmgoers don’t know Richard Linklater’s name but his effect has been felt through the American independent film scene since the debut of Slacker in 1991. For the star-studded cast of commenters sitting down for some insights into Linklater, it’s hard to imagine a world without him. He is the unicorn who managed to build an entire career of passion projects that most filmmakers never get to, or let toil in production hell.
Seymour Bernstein might very well be the sweetest man alive. I’ve never met him, but Seymour: An Introduction, Ethan Hawke’s new documentary that chronicles a recent three-year period of Bernstein’s life, radiates with vibrant life, and creates the feeling that Bernstein is in the room with you. It depicts the man as a soft-spoken, endearing, genuine person who’s as genuinely passionate about life as he is music. He looks with glistening eyes into the camera, his features gentle and faded and the edges of the frame opaque, and talks with us, not at us. There’s something inexplicably beautiful about the way he gazes longingly into the camera, his eyes at once sharp yet soft, comfortably penetrative. He speaks softly, and the room seems to grow quiet around him, adjusting to his volume.
Based on Robert A. Heinlein’s short story All You Zombies, Predestination sees an unnamed agent (Ethan Hawke) for the temporal agency leap through time to catch an elusive serial murderer known as The Fizzle Bomber before he destroys over ten city blocks in New York. The only problem is the bomber seems to be aware of the attempts to stop him, as he keeps changing the specific day and time of his latest catastrophe.
Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is an interesting exercise in whether or not artistic intent truly matters. The film is the story of a boy, his sister and his parents as they grow and meander through life over the course of twelve years. To watch it is to experience life unfolding before your eyes, while feeling the keen sensation that virtually nothing is happening.
When a filmmaker perfectly aligns the technical and the artistic, we’re reminded of the transformative power of cinema. Lost amid the genre clichés and computer-generated extravaganzas lies an expansive battlefield called ‘the human condition’, where moments of great power co-mingle with insignificant monotony to shape our lives.
Boyhood Written and directed by Richard Linklater USA, 2014 During the discussion preceding the screening of his latest film, Boyhood, director Richard Linklater, recipient of this year’s Founder’s Directing Award, claimed that the concept of exploring a parent-child relationship in real time was one of the two great cinematic ideas he’s had in his almost …
Predestination Directed By Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig Written by Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig US, 2014 Effective time travel films must be able to set clear, established rules and be a means of achieving greater, emotional weight . Without the two, a film can be eviscerated by plot holes or become an unruly, empty …
Getaway Written by Sean Finegan and Gregg Maxwell Parker Directed by Courtney Solomon USA, 2013 The next time you go to Walt Disney World—and you should—make sure to carve out some time in your vacation planning to see the Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The 40-minute show has a simple …
If Ray Bradbury was alive now and willing to half-ass the execution of a fairly novel concept, he might’ve written The Purge. Here is a movie with an easy-to-parse core that makes less sense with each passing second, if only because the world of the film, on a grand scale, does not exist. The question at the center of The Purge is morbidly fascinating—what if crime was legal across the United States for one 12-hour period every year?—but at least in this vision, it chooses to sidestep logic and world-building, and buckles under the weight of such slight storytelling.
[quote by=”Synopsis”] We meet Celine and Jesse nine years after their last rendezvous. Almost two decades have passed since their first encounter on a train bound for Vienna, and we now find them in their early forties in Greece. Before the clock strikes midnight, we will again become part of their story. [/quote]
Sinister Directed by Scott Derrickson Written by Scott Derrickson and C.Robert Cargill USA, 2012 A box of Super 8 home videos are the object of obsession in Sinister, a slightly different, but often familiar found footage horror film by director Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose). While Derrickson’s film is generally agreeable for most …
Sinister Directed by Scott Derrickson Written by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill USA, 2012 Voyeurism is at the heart of most great horror films, a virus pervading protagonists like Norman Bates in Psycho or Mark Lewis in Peeping Tom. The basic idea of featuring characters who watch ghastly acts onscreen serves to mock, condemn, …
Full credit for this concept belongs to Mark Kermode… Given the law of averages, it’s fairly common that as film fans we’re far more likely to run into a stinker than we are a new classic, or worse still a underwhelming slice of anti-climax that promised so much more. Quite often that leaves us deciphering …
The Woman in the Fifth Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski Written by Pawel Pawlikowski France/Poland/U.K, 2011 The psychological thriller is a fun little genre for it allows, first, the screenwriter and director to get creative with their storytelling by exploring clever, unexpected and unnerving ways for their characters to behave under significant duress and, second, the …
The Day I Saw Your Heart Written and directed by Jennifer Devoldère France, 2011 In Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, Julie Delpy prophetically describes what it means to be French. Delpy’s Celine, while philosophizing with Ethan Hawke’s Jesse, says, “Each time I wear black, or like, lose my temper, or say anything about anything, you know, …
Directed by: Scott Hicks Written by: Ronald Bass & Scott Hicks Starring: Ethan Hawke, Youki Kudoh Genre: Drama Year: 1999 Some films cannot be contained by a script. And some filmmakers cannot just trust in their material. They must believe in the themes of their story and in the facets of filmmaking that enrich a …