If nothing else, SAN ANDREAS is one of the finest advertisements ever made for the importance of emergency preparedness. Those who survive the state-long earthquake that erupts on the eponymous fault line are either those who know to duck under a table or shelter by a solid wall, or those who are related to those… Read More »
TANGERINES (Mandariinid)
There are films that tear you limb from limb with their shrill bombast and flagrant moralizing, and then there are films like TANGERINES, that quietly break your heart with the folly of humankind. This year’s Oscar™ nominee for best foreign language film from Estonia is an anti-war statement of the first order, and one that… Read More »
EFFIE GRAY is Worth Knowing
On her first night as a wife, the title character of EFFIE GRAY is disconcerted to see her husband spirited away to his bath after his long trip from Scotland by his mother. Later, at dinner, said mother all but tosses a gift to Effie telling her she might as well have it, since she… Read More »
How to Wield A CANDLESTICK
It takes a great deal of moxie to begin a film by referencing Hitchcock in both title sequence and score, but director/co-writer Christopher Presswell’s CANDLESTICK does just that, and then, with an impudent wink at the audience, does a more than credible job of making good on its promise. An intelligently crafted plot, driven by… Read More »
RUN ALL NIGHT with Liam Neeson
There is a reason that there is a rigid formula for Liam Neeson action films: it has a tendency to hit more than it misses. In RUN ALL NIGHT, the tropes are all present and accounted for with the variations that are permitted within the formula’s rules. Neeson is the everyman with, you will pardon… Read More »
A Choppy CHAPPIE
CHAPPIE is a cross between Pinicchio and ROBOCOP with a dash of DISTRICT 9. That last is unsurprising because CHAPPIE is the brainchild of Neill Blomkamp, and many of the elements at work in that earlier film about the meaning of humanity are at work in this one. The battleground is still South Africa, Blomkamp’s… Read More »
SONG OF THE SEA is Beautiful Harmony
SONG OF THE SEA reminds us of the power of simplicity in storytelling and in animation. Hand-drawn and steeped in Irish folklore, it is a profoundly moving experience rife with charm, wisdom, and beauty. Told from a child’s perspective, the magical and the mundane coalesce in perfect harmony, revealing the one in the other in… Read More »
JUPITER ASCENDING. Not.
The Wachowskis know how to produce a spectacle. In that, they may very well be the cinematic heirs of Cecil B. DeMille, whose films featured showmanship of the highest caliber, but some of whose films could charitably be described as insubstantial. And such is the case with the space saga, JUPITER ASCENDING, a film chock-a-block… Read More »
Going Beyond BLACK OR WHITE
Mike Binder has a particular genius for showing people brimming with good intentions, but flawed, stumbling through life without the operating instructions that would help them negotiate the bumps along the way. He has the gift of showing humor and pathos as elements that are not so much disparate, as entwined, manifesting at oddest moments… Read More »
Julianne Moore is STILL ALICE
It starts with a slip so small, so subtle, that it goes unremarked by everyone present. At the birthday celebration for Alice Howland (Julianne Moore), her rejoinder to a question about the sibling rivalry between her two daughters concerns her relationship with her own sister, now deceased. It is a moment that evokes what is… Read More »
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