The point is made several times in the course of A COMPLETE UNKNOWN that its subject, Bob Dylan is a complete jerk. In one particularly satisfying moment, Joan Baez tosses him out of her room at the fabled Chelsea Hotel calling him just that after he makes a booty call and then withdraws into the… Read More »
ASTEROID CITY
Wes Anderson’s ASTEROID CITY presents us a dream within a dream as it ponders our place in the cosmos by setting its story in three separate realities that bump into each other the way subatomic particles swarm around an atomic nucleus. Is it synchronicity or chance or some other cosmic law of which humanity is… Read More »
GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY
At one point during Rian Johnson’s GLASS ONION, one of the character wails “What is reality?” It’s a fair question considering the plot twist that has just been revealed to the suitably colorful cast of characters, and one that neatly sums up why Mr. Johnson’s second installment in the casebook of Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig)… Read More »
SAUSAGE PARTY
It’s just as well that Seth Rogan’s animated comedy, SAUSAGE FEST, is R-rated. That would be because the most awkward question a parent might have to answer after his or her child has seen this metaphysically dense romp wouldn’t be about the specific mechanics involved in the bonding between Brenda (Kristen Wiig), a bosomy hot… Read More »
BIRDMAN or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
THE SHORT VERSION: One of the best films of the year.
PRIDE AND GLORY
PRIDE AND GLORY offers passionate performances in a story that is a series of letter-perfect clichés. The topic is police corruption grafted onto the innernecine struggles of the Tierneys, an Irish-American family of New York City cops with a thorny problem of malfeasance in their midst. The thorn is Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell), the cop… Read More »
THE ILLUSIONIST
Click here to listen to the interview with Neil Burger (15:34). A man in shirtsleeves sitting in intense concentration on a bare stage. The audience watching in rapt silence. Police lining the aisles ready to act. Thus begins THE ILLUSIONIST, a tale of sleight-of-hand, misdirection, and magic in many senses of the word. The only… Read More »
THE INCREDIBLE HULK
Undaunted by the failure of Ang Lee’s cerebral approach to big, green Marvel superhero, the 2008 version of THE INCREDIBLE HULK succeeds where its predecessor failed. Cleverly re-imagined as a film noir, it is a dark and shadowy piece full of monsters, only some of them green. The real monsters are much more dangerous. They… Read More »
STONE
There is a tragic irony in STONE. Specifically, that Jack Mabry (Robert de Niro) has spent his professional life listening to convicts as they make their case for parole, and yet, he has never really heard any of them. He thinks hes wise to the lies they tell in order to be free once again.… Read More »