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THE TAKING OF TIGER MOUNTAIN (Zhì qu weihu shan)

March 19, 2016 By Leave a Comment

THE TAKING OF TIGER MOUNTAIN (Zhì qu weihu shan)

THE TAKING OF TIGER MOUNTAIN has blood, guts, and sentiment.  Based on actual events, and on the novel by Bo Qu, it’s a sweeping epic of a war film set in northwest China just after World War II has ended, when the government has collapse into corruption, bandits are terrorizing the villages, and the People’s… Read More »

Tagged With: 1940s, bandits, China, Chinese Civil War, People's Liberation Army, war, warlord

THE CREEPING GARDEN

November 15, 2015 By Leave a Comment

THE CREEPING GARDEN

THE CREEPING GARDEN is a documentary that successfully challenges everything we thought we knew about life on earth. The result is both fascinating and discomfiting, not unlike its subject, the slime mold, a life form that confounds all attempts to classify it as animal, vegetable, or fungal.  It moves from place to place on its… Read More »

Tagged With: maze, nature, oat flake, plasmodial blob, robotics, sentience, slime mold, tactile sensor

AS ABOVE SO BELOW

October 3, 2015 By Leave a Comment

AS ABOVE SO BELOW

Whatever else AS ABOVE SO BELOW has to recommend it, and it has several things that eminently do so, it has breathed a little fresh air into the found footage genre of horror film. This is a tidy little horror film heavy on mood, light on gore, and bursting with a refreshing originality of story… Read More »

Tagged With: alchemy, artifact, catacombs, eerie, Emerald Tablet, Hermes Trismegistus, linguist, paranormal, Paris, Philosopher's Stone, piles of bones, supernatural

TANGERINES (Mandariinid)

May 14, 2015 By Leave a Comment

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 »

Tagged With: anti-war message, Caucasus, Chechen, Elmo Nuganen, Estonia, Georgia, Giorgi Nakhashidze, Lembit Ulfsak, Mikheil Meskhi, Oscar(tm) nominee, TANGERINES, war, Zaza Urushadze.

SONG OF THE SEA is Beautiful Harmony

February 4, 2015 By 2 Comments

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 »

Tagged With: Celtic, cinema, drama, film, folklore, Ireland, Irish, Macha, mythology, narrative, ocean, Owl Witch, seal, selkie

Going Beyond BLACK OR WHITE

January 30, 2015 By Leave a Comment

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 »

Tagged With: African-Amerian, Andre Holland, Anthony Mackie, based on a true story, biracial, cinema, courtroom, custody battle, drug addiction, film, Gillian Jacobs, Keving Costner, lawyers, Mike Binder, movie narrative, Octavia Spencer, Paula Newsome, race relations

Julianne Moore is STILL ALICE

January 25, 2015 By Leave a Comment

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 »

Tagged With: Alzheimer's, book to film, brain function, degenerative disease, drama, Early onset Alzheimer's, memory loss, narrative, neurological disorder

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR Is A Most Excellent Film

January 11, 2015 By Leave a Comment

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR Is A Most Excellent Film

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR begins, appropriately enough, with its protagonist, Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) running.  Though this is merely jogging through the snowy landscape of 1981 New York, he will spend the rest of the film running more purposefully either literally, figuratively, or both, as he scrambles to overcome fate and the fickleness of human… Read More »

Tagged With: 1981, action, Albert Brooks, cinema, David Oyelowo, ethics, heating oil, Jessical Chastain, Machiavelli, movie, mystery, narrative, Oscar Isaac, thriller

TOP FIVE = Top Flight

January 4, 2015 By Leave a Comment

TOP FIVE = Top Flight

TOP FIVE starts a little out of chronological sequence with two protagonists walking down a Manhattan sidewalk discussing art and life.  Specifically art versus life with one opining that a movie is just a movie while the other disagrees.  The man, as we will shortly learn, is Andre Allen (Chris Rock), superstar funnyman and recovering… Read More »

Tagged With: Cedric the Entertainer, Chris Rock, cinema, comedy, Gabrielle Union, Jerry Seinfeld, movie, narrative, Rosario Dawson, Tracy Morgran

THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES

January 4, 2015 By Leave a Comment

THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES

And so it is our last visit to Middle Earth, and a bittersweet one it is.  Peter Jackson’s finale to his pair of trilogies is a triumph of spectacle and humanity, notwithstanding that the human beings of the piece are not the main characters. It’s only flaw, and that is a relative one, is that… Read More »

Tagged With: books to film, cinema, fantasy, film, Ian McKellan, J.R.R. Tolkein, Martin Freeman, Peter Jackson, review, sequel

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