NERVE is a triumph of style. It is a slight story that fails on every level but two, and those are the ones that are the most important. Do we care about what happens to our unlikely heroine? Do the increasingly dangerous dares that make up that slight story keep us on the edge of… Read More »
LOUDER THAN BOMBS
LOUDER THAN BOMBS begins with a perfect picture of family love. Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) is marveling at his newborn as his wife Amy, (Megan Ketch) looks on beaming. Jonah is beaming, too, and he is aghast that he has forgotten to bring his wife the food she had requested when she discovered that the hospital tray… Read More »
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT is being sold as a comedy and that shortchanges everyone. Based on the memoir by Kim Barker, “The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” about her time in the early 2000s as a war correspondent in Afghanistan, it is a trenchant look at media, politics, and the separate reality that… Read More »
MOTHER (MADEO)
After setting a monster loose on Seoul, director Bong Joon-ho has come up with something even more ferocious for his next film, MOTHER, a tale that explores the ferocity of the maternal instinct. Funny, tragic, disquieting, and absurd, it’s also nothing less than terrifying on a primal level. The film begins with the title character… Read More »
THE JONESES
THE JONESES makes its point very early on and with all the savage compassion with which the film is rife. The titular character’s hapless neighbor (Glenne Headly) is repeating self-help mantras that she desperately hopes will make her a superstar salesperson. It’s patently hopeless to everyone but her. She is oblivious to the new age… Read More »
BIUTIFUL
BIUTIFUL is a somber, lyrical, joyous, and troubling tone poem of a film. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has made a haunting consideration of the mysteries of the universe. The protagonist, Uxbal, is a dying man raging against the dying of his light. After a life spent living by his wits from day to day, a diagnosis… Read More »
TOTAL RECALL
TOTAL RECALL is a pleasant revisiting of Philip K. Dicks short story, I Can Remember It For You Wholesale that also, and with a whole heart, acknowledges its cinematic predecessor of the same name. While that version was plastic and kitschy, not unlike its star, Arnold Schwartzenegger, this one takes a grimmer view of a… Read More »
MUNICH
In MUNICH, Steven Spielberg has created an intensely profound, if somewhat flawed, work. Moral debates about right and wrong abound with as many variations as there are characters to expound them, and there are many of both. The message, though, is unequivocal. Killing is an awful business that kills more than the victim, it also… Read More »
MUNICH — DVD
There is no commentary track on the DVD release of MUNICH. There is, instead, an introduction by Steven Spielberg, which is more a making-of piece than a talking head, though there is that, too. He talks about Vengance by George Jonas, the book on which he based his film, the only credible account of what… Read More »