In Hirokazu Koreeda’s last film, the Oscar®-nominated SHOPLIFTERS, he incisively examined the ethics of capitalism, and its effects on one poverty-stricken, yet devoted, ragtag family ingeniously doing battle with a system designed to keep them down economically. In THE TRUTH, he moves the action from Tokyo to Paris to examine the ethics of veracity on… Read More »
MAGGIE’S PLAN
The eponymous Maggie of MAGGIE’S PLAN is a wisp of a winsome waif, a college career counselor with a gentle demeanor and a determined resolve that can move mountains. As played with a solemn quirkiness by Greta Gerwig, she is a woman who aims to live both honestly and ethically. Alas, her aim is less… Read More »
REGRESSION
Alejandro Amenábar directed Nicole Kidman to one of her best performances in THE OTHERS, a horror film that was both haunting and clever. The full review of that fine film is here, and I recommend watching that instead of REGRESSION, a film that is equally atmospheric, but diffused in its mounting terror, rather than sharply… Read More »
DAYBREAKERS
DAYBREAKERS is a film that has run through 99% of its good ideas by the time the opening credits have concluded. At least the stylish, if occasionally obvious, art direction gives the audience something to occupy its collective self as the half-baked tale unfolds. The time is 2019, and a bat-borne plague has turned all… Read More »
BROOKLYN’S FINEST
BROOKLYN’S FINEST is an object lesson in situational ethics played without the comforting buffer of impersonal hypothesis. The eponymous cops in question are neither heroes nor villains, rather they are basically decent guys pushed to the limits that have warped their perceptions of right and wrong as considered moment by moment. Not for them is… Read More »
SINISTER
SINISTER has the all too rare virtue of being a horror film with a fine gloss of originality and genuine surprise to it. Rather than going for the usual assortment of jump-and-scare tactics, it broods atmospherically on the evil that humankind is capable of, and not necessarily the gruesome acts of violence on which the… Read More »
WAKING LIFE
WAKING LIFE is that rarest of films, one that is unique. Take one slacker and cycle him, or at least his consciousness, through a series of conversations, lectures really, by devotes of different philosophies. But more, take the film footage and put it through an animation technique called interpolated rotoscoping and what you get is,… Read More »
TAKING LIVES
When I do my annual interview with the Head Berry of the Golden Raspberry Awards Foundation, the name Angelina Jolie almost always pops up, as in, if shes in a movie in any given year, shes going to be nominated for a Razzie. Gone are the glory days of that >other< award that she won.… Read More »
ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13
With ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 we learn two important lessons. One, that remakes, in this case of John Carpenter’s 1976 original of the same name, fail, and badly, much more often than they succeed. Two, that Laurence Fishburne has so much raw talent, smooth charisma, and irresistible personal magnetism that he can make even trash like this… Read More »
FAST FOOD NATION
Very bad things happen to cattle in Richard Linklater’s FAST FOOD NATION, a feature narrative based on the non-fiction book by Eric Schlosser. In that book, there is a graphic description of how a cow is turned into the burger at the local fast food franchise. The film, co-written by Linklater and Schlosser, is just as… Read More »