This fiercely iconoclastic western uses many tropes from that cinematic genre, from the classics of John Ford to the more recent idioms of Sergio Leone, but the references are merely window dressing. Part comedy, part tragedy, part feminist manifesto, and all engrossing, it subverts expectations at every turn while delivering a film that refuses to be pigeonholed.
ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
There could be many reasons to eschew the story that Lewis Carroll himself wrote about Alice and her adventures through the looking glass. Alas, Disney’s ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS does not find any of them. There is a perfect madness in that book that the script by Linda Woolverton fails to capture. Instead we… Read More »
CRIMSON PEAK
If CRIMSON PEAK offered nothing more than the creepiest bathtub specter since THE SHINING, it would still qualify as a monstrously entertaining film. But this is Guillermo del Toro directing and co-writing, and so the lushness of subtext mirrors the classically Gothic idiom of the story. The paranormal is the least disturbing of the elements… Read More »
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Tim Burton, wanting to put his own stamp on ALICE IN WONDERLAND, has wandered not just far from the story, but from the very essence of what Lewis Carroll created. Rather than a Wonderland full of terrifying adventures and deliciously absurd whimsy, he has created the Underland, a place of terrifyingly, yet lugubrious, bad filmmaking.… Read More »
ALBERT NOBBS
This is how good Glenn Close is as the eponymous ALBERT NOBBS. At one point her character, who has lived as a man for decades in Victorian Ireland, dons a dress for an outing to the beach and it just looks wrong. Close, the epitome of feminine elegance, doesnt clomp around, nor does she become… Read More »