Up-and-coming auteur Rian Johnson recently tweeted, “The filmmaking in Hanna was pretty humbling.” That’s high praise coming from the man behind the indie caper sensation “Brick” and the quirky con flick “The Brothers Bloom.” But high praise is old hat for “Hanna” director Joe Wright who’s used to being gushed over by cinephiles. The minutes-long [...]
What would it be like if Alfred Hitchcock directed an episode of “Quantum Leap” with a script based on “Groundhog Day”? Well, it wouldn’t turn out exactly like “Source Code,” but it’d be pretty close. Duncan Jones (or Zowie Bowie if you prefer) wowed audiences lucky enough to catch his debut sci-fi thriller “Moon” (2009) [...]
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the cheeky Brits who brought us “Hot Fuzz” and “Shaun of the Dead,” put their heads together once again to give us their signature fanboy take on the alien encounter movie. “Paul” has enough “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” references to delight the geekiest of geeks, and more four-letter punchlines [...]
Do humans really have free will? It certainly seems like we do. But, given the right conditions, science can accurately predict the behavior of atoms. And aren’t our bodies just a giant cluster of billions of atoms? So, it should be possible, theoretically, to consistently predict human behavior, thus rendering our freedom to choose a [...]
“Enter the Void” will be loathed by a lot of people. Dismissed as a pretentious stoner flick trying desperately to dazzle. And I won’t completely disagree. But French director Gaspar Noé’s third effort is also hard to ignore. Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) is a young, soft-spoken American drug dealer who moves about almost exclusively in the [...]
The most common mistake made by first-time directors is to cram every film school trick and cutting edge idea into that debut film. A bloated, pretentious, insufferable and flashy effort is often the result. On the other hand, a great director’s first film is rarely representative of his/her full repertoire of skills and ideas. Even [...]
There are a couple of reasons why everyone should watch “Hævnen”. The first is that is a beautiful film, a beauteous film, with all the slightly otherworldly aloofness that the word suggests. The second is that by about this time next year, Mikael Persbrandt will be a household name and by golly, you don’t want [...]
Loose Cannons (Mine Vaganti, Ferzan Ozpetek) is an Italian comedy about Tommaso (Riccardo Scamarcio), a young man who returns home planning to announce to his family that he is gay. However, his older brother Antonio beats him to it: he has been hiding his own homosexuality, and makes his announcement first. Both brothers want the [...]
Maybe it’s a sign that healthcare issues have become a prominent part of the general American consciousness: I went to see two quite different Hollywood comedies and each featured a character who was a pharma rep. In Little Fockers (the most recent instalment in the Stiller and De Niro comedy series which began with Meet [...]
Adapted from David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Rabbit Hole” ferries us down into the blackest void of parental despair and bravely leaves us without a sturdy rope to climb back out. Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart) are an affluent married couple half-heartedly pursuing the American dream somewhere in the gorgeous Northeast. After their [...]
DIFF 2012 Reviews: ‘Cinema Six,’ ‘Compliance,’ ‘Faith, Love and Whiskey’
Things I Don’t Understand (2011)
Jiří Trnka: Animation Retrospective
Lowlights of Cinélatino
Brevity Pays Off
‘A Secret World’ at Cinélatino
‘Future Lasts Forever’ at Sofia
Two Treatments of Italy’s Fascist Past
‘The Leopard’: novel, opera, but above all, film
We’ll always have ‘Casablanca’
