On balance, Borut’s charming narration, the background footage, and the remarkable nature of the undertaking itself mean that this is a film worth seeing, even if it fails to match the ambition of the man at its centre. Big River Man Directed by John Maringouin He’s an overweight 53-year-old man who used to be a …
What really impresses is the way the script, co-written by Ford and David Scearce, sidesteps the maudlin and the pretentious to show us how ridiculous we can be, even in our darkest moments. – A Single Man Directed by Tom Ford With fashion supremo Tom Ford at the helm, the very least you’d expect from …
59- Capturing the Friedmans (2003) Directed by Andrew Jarecki Genre: Documentary On the surface, the Friedmans were a typical 1980s American family until on one Thanksgiving Day, when that happy façade came to a crashing halt. After the local police discovered the dad had engaged in the buying and selling of child pornography, they questioned …
Richard Linklater continues to be a sneakily brilliant director. Working with the actors, he slowly imbues his otherwise stock characters with a humanity that really pays off in the back half of the film. Me and Orson Welles Directed by Richard Linklater In lesser hands, Me and Orson Welles might have been a grandiose love letter …
Australia may not have an overabundance of horror films but they do have a rich history within the genre ranging from lowbrow slashers to moody thrillers and outrageous horror comedies. The recent success of the acclaimed documentary Not Quite Hollywood has shed light on a much overlooked aspect of Aussie genre filmmaking. Although horror movies …
In its glorious and barreling 87 minutes, Anderson and Baumbach, have taken the gist of Dahl’s book and carefully expanded it into everything you would expect it to be. Fantastic Mr. Fox Directed by Wes Anderson Wes Anderson joins Spike Jonze in adapting a much beloved children’s literature in the same year. First Jonze delivered …
Completely entertaining and dripping with fan appreciated details, Watchmen is a gift to comic book nerds and film enthusiasts alike. – Watchmen: Director’s Cut Directed by Zach Synder Trying to determine the value of a film based on a book (or graphic novel in this case), is a dangerous undertaking. Separating the downfalls and offering credit …
Amreeka Directed by Cherien Dabis Screenplay by Cherien Dabis 2009, USA There is an obvious correlation between the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the rise in Islamaphobia across the United States. Arabs (or anyone Arab-looking) who had already established their lives in the States before that year suddenly found themselves the target of racial prejudice, …
2012 Directed by Roland Emmerich This review is SPOILER ridden so beware. Then again, if you’ve seen any disaster movie made since 1960 then nothing will be a surprise. Trust me. Judd Apatow, Tina Fey, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell and all the other maestros of contemporary comedy should be afraid, as there is a new …
Writer-director Richard Kelly hasn’t been around too long, but his three features have all been the subject of intense debate: Is Donnie Darko the great sci-fi fable of the 2000s or a teen angst pretension pit? Is Southland Tales, as the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman contends, a a “visionary” film, or creative control gone horribly …
The Fourth Kind Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi Seventy-one years after Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast convinced the American public of a real-time alien-invasion, writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi tries a similar gimmick by presenting a cinematic re-creation of supposedly true occurrences in and around the small town of Nome, Alaska, that suggest an alien …
A Single Man Directed by Tom Ford With fashion supremo Tom Ford at the helm, the very least you’d expect from this adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s novel is a parade of gorgeous men in well-cut suits. There’s certainly enough Kennedy-era period detail here to satisfy the most ardent fan of Mad Men (along with an …
As the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaches on November 9th, many events are planned to mark the occasion and assess the changes Germany has undergone since reunification. In such moments, artistic considerations often take a back seat, but the Goethe Institut in London, whose remit is to promote German culture, …
The Men Who Stare at Goats Directed by Grant Heslov According to Jon Ronson’s book The Men Who Stare At Goats, the U.S. government has experimented with various extra-sensory ‘abilities,’ such as remote-viewing and mind control, since the 1950s. These highly classified sub-divisions of the Army were developed in the hopes of creating a different …
A Serious Man Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen Written by Joel and Ethan Coen 2009, USA The Coens are getting positively prolific these days, treating their hardcore fans with a movie a year, and with their latest release, A Serious Man they have taken the comedic strand of their work into uncharted waters …
Night of the Living Dead For a horror film, Night of the Living Dead (1968) is set in an usual local; not Transylvania, but Pennsylvania. Almost universally panned by critics when released, the film eventually developed a cult following, playing on the midnight movie circuit for more than a decade and becoming one of the …
Directed by Spike Jonze As I left the cinema Friday night still reeling from my experience, I realized that the perfect barometer for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are was the 4-year old girl walking with her mom in front of me. Throughout the film I could hear her alternating between laughing, crying and …
Fausta: La Teta Asustada / The Milk of Sorrow Spain, Peru, 2009 Director: Claudia Llosa Writer: Claudia Llosa Fausta is a young woman afflicted with a rare disease. The milk of Sorrow, passed on to her through her mother’s breast milk, affects the children born to women tortured and raped during Peru’s terrorist era. Frightened …
9 Directed by Shane Acker Shane Acker’s short film 9, upon which his new feature is based, is a lyrical, twisted, gorgeously conceived and shot dialogue-free 10 minute exercise. The feature length film, still directed by Acker (now with a screenplay by Pamela Pettler to accompany his story) still embodies most of these qualities. The …
Baz Luhrmann’s sophomore effort, 1996’s Romeo + Juliet, is today perhaps best remembered for spotlighting Leonardo DiCaprio’s pre-Titanic charisma. For a movie that took the world’s best known love story and transferred it to a new era, its soundtrack remains firmly etched in its own time. The movie very much resembles a music video with …
This kind of assertion gets thrown around too much, but The Revenant has a real shot of becoming a cult classic. It has enough gore and violence to satisfy the horror set, but it also has a sharp wit, a surprising heart, and a unique story. The Revenant Directed by Kerry Prior Undead horror has …
The House of the Devil is at heart an exercise in tension, and West and Donahue deserve serious credit for stringing the audience along while revealing little of the horror to come. House Of The Devil Directed by Ti West I can’t yet speak to Ti West’s 21st century output, but with The House of …
BRONSON (cue “Digital Versicolor” by Glass Candy) While non-Americans win very few of the top acting awards at the Oscars, we see it happen from time to time (Daniel Day-Lewis, Roberto Benigni, etc). As a result, I’d love to see Tom Hardy, the English actor who brilliantly portrays Michael Gordon Pederson in Bronson, be considered …