Jazz can be vivacious and alive, but it can also get down real low. It becomes reserved, intimate, raw and wholly adult. Bebop demands a refined ear and a patient listener, and good music challenges you to listen closely and find the blues and pain within.
On this, my last day of the festival, I saw two films that didn’t make me smile but made me glad I was there. Both The Look of Silence and Low Down proved to be among my favorites, this despite the fact that they are bleak, hard to watch, and provocative pieces of filmmaking. The …
Ordell Robbie (Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def) and Louis Gara (John Hawkes) get much more than they bargained for after kidnapping the wife of a corrupt real-estate developer (Tim Robbins). As it turns out, Frank Dawson has no intentions of paying the ransom for the well-being of his wife, Mickey (Jennifer Aniston). He had been seeking a way to leave his wife of many years for his mistress (Isla Fisher), and fortunately Ordell and Louis took care of the messiness of actually leaving Mickey for him by kidnapping her.
From the beginning, Eastbound and Down’s always been a show that operates on two narrative levels. The first of these is obvious: it’s the story of a man discovering the value of family, the baseball player finally rounding third and returning home. The second isn’t as easy to parse out in later seasons, but was quite prevalent in season one: Kenny Powers is the epitome of American’s obsession with the vapid, a satire of our culture’s addiction to celebrity and how one man gets lost in it – a materialization of all things material, so to speak. “Chapter 28” is a perfect marriage of these two ideas, taking on Famous Kenny and American Christmas in one fell swoop – not only delivering another outstanding episode in the series, but an important penultimate episode that narrows the focus heading into the final chapter.
With the timing of a well-orchestrated heist, the latest screen adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel closes this year’s Toronto Film Festival. Given his recent passing and the well-deserved plaudits from various luminaries of pen and screen, his rap sheet has been celebrated over the past few weeks. Based on Leonard’s novel The Switch, writer and director Daniel Schechter has managed to embezzle a fine addition to the long list of lean Leonard works. Although it doesn’t quite hit the jackpot, it does manage to purloin some fine criminal characters and a gutsy group of belly laughs to boot.
For better or worse, films don’t exist in a vacuum. If literature derives from itself, and, according to Marshall McLuhan, the content in any new medium is always the same as in the old, then films don’t exactly have a wealth of opportunities to be original. You can always compare a film to one that …
Lincoln Directed by Steven Spielberg Written by Tony Kushner USA, 2012 The American political system is hopelessly fractured. Its legislators are viciously divided on how to govern the nation. The president, about to begin his second term in office on a groundswell of grassroots public support, is either too much or not enough of a …
The Sessions Directed by Ben Lewin Written by Ben Lewin USA, 2012 Sometimes, all a movie needs to be even moderately successful is great acting. Though The Sessions (a big hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival under its original name, The Surrogate) has a compelling nugget of a plot, what makes it powerful is …
The Sessions Directed by Ben Lewin Written by Ben Lewin USA, 2012 All animals have sex for reproduction. Some even have sex for pleasure. But human beings are distinct and distinguishable as the only species on earth that has sex for love. As a physical manifestation of our desires, and as a way of expressing …
Over the last decade, the Scottsdale International Film Festival (SIFF) has grown impressively, starting in 2001 with just 11 films. When the 12th annual event kicks off on October 5th, SIFF will have 38 films and 69 screenings, with special guests such as director Josh Dragotta and actress Angel Walker (in town to present their …
John Hawkes is one of those dependable character actors that you love to see in every film. Whether it is in Me You and Everyone We Know, American Gangster, Miami Vice or TV’s Deadwood, he is always doing interesting and quality work. We can add Winter’s Bone to that list. His performance as Teardrop in …