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Posted on 01.28.10 by David @ 2:00 pm
Catherine Deneuve and Franco Nero in Tristana, one of Bunuel’s icier films. Deneuve plays her cards close to the vest here, never letting dirty old man Fernando Rey see the harm he has caused until it is too late. Rey, as always, is excellent here - awful as his character may be, it is hard not to let a few rays of sympathy creep through one’s dislike for him. Filed under: General and Movie Image and People: Franco Nero and People: Catherine Deneuve and People: Luis Bunuel Comments: None |
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Posted on 01.23.10 by Charlie @ 5:59 am
![]() Splice After Splice finished its North American premiere at the famous Egyptian Theater in Park City tonight, director Vincenzo Natali (best known for his sci-fi hit Cube) was on hand for a Q&A along with stars Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley. The first question went something like “That’s the most f—–d up movie I’ve ever seen, and I mean that in a good way”. The 2nd and 3rd questions were pretty much the same, leading to theater-wide cheers. So, clearly Splice had won over the audience, but then again, it was the first “midnight movie” slot of the festival, and at that time of night audiences tend not to be too picky. As I walked home I debated how less festive audiences might respond. On the one hand I shared the audience’s general enthusiasm, but as I was watching the film I also found myself resisting certain parts as overly ridiculous. Filed under: Movie Reviews and Contributors: Charlie and Rating: Good ★★★ and Movie Reviews: Canada and Film Festivals: Sundance 2010 Comments: 2 Comments |
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Posted on 01.11.10 by David @ 3:13 pm
Filed under: Movie Image and People: Stanley Kubrick Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.12.09 by David @ 3:00 pm
“Slayers, sinister henchmen of the all-powerful Beast, emerge from the swamp to attack Ken Marshall and his band of adventurers.” One of the things I remember most about Krull is how absolutely brutal it was on its good guys. Normally, you have to figure some good guys are going to get it, but in Krull working with the hero was a virtual death sentence. Filed under: Movie Image Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.03.09 by David @ 3:43 pm
Country and Year: USA (2009) Review By: David Austin ![]() I tend to think just about anything involving Philadelphia is funny – when my wife lived there some years ago the biggest menace facing the city was the notorious Bread Squeezer, a man who ruined thousands of dollars worth of merchandise by going into Wa-Wa mini-marts and squeezing loaves of bread until they were unsalable. Frankly, Philly’s a rundown town that retains a unique character, making it perfectly suited to the grotty charm and postmodern sitcom stylings of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Sunny may not be the best show on television but, along with Curb Your Enthusiasm (and following the premature burial of Arrested Development), it’s the only one that consistently makes me laugh out loud. Filed under: Movie Reviews and TV and Cable Reviews: US and International Comments: None |
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Posted on 11.25.09 by Charlie @ 12:20 pm
![]() The Road Like the current arthouse favorite Precious, The Road is a film that you should see in spite of its being a heavy, depressing story. I know the film has been getting mixed reviews, but if you buy into the underlying philosophical questions, as I do, I think you’ll find the film leaves you with a lot to think about — the ending is especially intriguing. If nothing else, The Road offers great acting, impressively bleak, post-apocalyptic sets (presumably all filmed on location in Detroit), and as a bonus, film buffs should have great fun simply trying to categorize the film, as it brushes up against genres ranging from serious dramas to post-apocalyptic and zombie flicks. As is appropriate for a story taken from a Cormac McCarthy novel (who also wrote No Country For Old Men), the premise of The Road is wonderfully stark: we don’t know why it’s a post-apocalyptic setting, and nobody in the film tries to explain it. As with Night of the Living Dead, it turns out that simply asserting the situation is far more powerful than any explanation would be. Everything in the world is dying; deal with it. More specifically, virtually all animal and plant life is long dead by the time the film begins. People have only fared slightly better, and most of the few that are still alive have devolved into pure hedonistic barbarians (not entirely unlike the villains in Serenity). Kill, eat, rape, sleep, repeat. It’s pretty grim, and more importantly, it’s not clear that there’s a place in this new world for our stars, a father and son played admirably by Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. Without animals or plants to feed on, our stars are reduced to scavenging for whatever scraps remain from the former, civilized world. As they roam, they live in perpetual fear of all other people, most of whom appear to depend on cannibalism to survive and, we soon come to see first hand, would kill them in a second if given the chance. Filed under: Movie Reviews and Movie Reviews: USA and Contributors: Charlie and Rating: Good ★★★ Comments: None |
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Posted on 11.24.09 by David @ 8:21 pm
Filed under: People: Tony Jaa and Movie Image Comments: None |
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Posted on 11.13.09 by Charlie @ 6:29 pm
![]() Good Hair There is something ironic, maybe even a little disturbing, about last night’s screening of Good Hair, which kicked off Livia Bloom’s new documentary series “Documentaries in Bloom” at the Maysles Institute in Harlem. As I discuss below, the film itself is excellent and stands out as one of this year’s must-see films. But as the latest in a seemingly endless series of documentaries that ends with a competition, Good Hair also exacerbates an alarming trend, which goes something like this: it’s not enough to document a compelling subject, these days you need something a little more entertaining — a twist ending, a Hollywood “arc” or, the recent overwhelming favorite, the inherent suspense of a competition. As I sat in the Maysles Institute last night, I couldn’t help but think that if this is the new model for documentaries, some of our most celebrated documentary filmmakers wouldn’t cut it today, perhaps not even the Maysles brothers themselves. How would their classic Salesman (1968) be received today? Can you imagine it recast to end in a competition among the salesman, as we all sat on the edge of our seats waiting to the end to see who would win? That may sound silly, but if you sit back for a moment and think about recent breakout documentaries, the pattern is stunning: Spellbound (spelling bee competition), Wordplay (crossword competition), Air Guitar Nation (air guitar competition), King of Kong: a Fistful of Quarters (king kong video game competition), Murderball (paralympic rugby competition) and Pulling John (arm-wrestling competition) to name a few. Now admittedly, they’re all wonderful, enjoyable films, but what makes Good Hair such a bizarre addition to this club is that at least these earlier documentaries are documenting something that’s inherently competitive. After all, it’s hard to fault Spellbound for being structured around a spelling bee. But with the surge of competition films that followed it’s also clearly a game of copycat, a gimmick that film producers can bank on as a “tried and true” pattern to ensure success. And it’s far more alarming to see this gimmick extended to Good Hair, a film whose premise has virtually nothing to do with the competition that anchors it. Filed under: Movie Reviews and Movie Reviews: USA and Contributors: Charlie and Rating: Good ★★★ Comments: 2 Comments |
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Posted on 11.13.09 by David @ 2:31 pm
“In AKIRA KUROSAWA’S epic drama of feudal conflict in 16th-century Japan, TATSUYA NAKADAI stars as a petty thief who impersonates a powerful warlord.” Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha. Filed under: Movie Image and People: Akira Kurosawa Comments: None |
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Posted on 11.06.09 by Charlie @ 7:00 pm
![]() After all the buzz, Precious is finally coming out in select theaters this weekend, and even after winning unprecedentd back to back awards at Sundance and Toronto, for once this film lives up to the buzz. We reviewed it here back in January after it premiered at Sundance (then under the title Push), and I loved it (see the review here). Not a “fun” movie by any means, and probably not a great date movie, but a must-see nonetheless. For those looking for something more upbeat, The Men Who Stare at Goats may do the trick. Ewan McGregor plays a journalist hot on the trail of a potentially scandalous story — a secret paranormal military “black ops” program that somehow involves characters played by George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey. It’s a bizarre film, and even with its star-studded cast, it’s hard to imagine who would read this script and say “this HAS to get made”. But that’s not to say it’s bad. The Men Who Stare at Goats is enjoyable enough, thanks to a rare, off-beat, almost bewildered kind of humor that rides throughout the film. To give away one small joke in the film as an example, at one point Ewan McGregor is riding in a car in the desert with George Clooney. McGregor reads about a psychic maneuver called the “sparkling eyes technique” and asks Clooney what it is. Clooney says “okay, you ready?” and looks away from the road for a moment (still driving) and stares at McGregor with eyes wide open for a moment and then asks “You got it?” That was it, we just witnessed “sparkling eyes technique” and like McGregor we can only wonder if Clooney is completely nuts, because it didn’t look like he was doing anything but staring for a moment. Dark humor, but effective at times. Although these moments are a lot of fun, unfortunately I can’t say it really adds up to what you’d normally think of as an engrossing film. But it’s good low boil fun, and you could do a lot worse with your Friday or Saturday night. Last, and in this case least, is Turning Green, which is possibly a worse date film even than Precious. The star, an angry teenager played by Donal Gallery, spends about half the film masturbating, which eventually leads him to porno magazines and a realization that he could make some real money selling those magazines to the locals (the realization comes to him in a vision in which a pinup girl encourages him to start the business and tells him she’s proud of him!). His hope is to make enough money to go back to America, where he grew up as a kid. Timothy Hutton, Alessandro Nivola and Colm Meaney round out the cast with solid performances, but there doesn’t seem to be enough to the story to make the whole effort worthwhile. As the story approaches it’s key turning point later in the film, we see small-time gangsters Timothy Hutton and Alessandro Nivola pitting a big dog against a small dog as a fairly obvious foreshadowing of the inevitable conclusion to the film. Both dogs are pulling on a leash or something similar in a kind of tug-of-war and eventually the big dog tires of this and lets just say that things don’t end well for the small dog. As foreshadowing goes, you couldn’t make it much more obvious than that, and in a lot of ways it represents my thoughts on the film generally. The scene works okay enough, but it’s pretty obvious, a little forced, and more than anything underwhelming. This one you can probably skip. (Turning Green opens in LA this weekend and in NYC next weekend). Filed under: General and Movie News and Contributors: Charlie and Movie Reviews: Capsule Reviews Comments: None |
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Posted on 10.13.09 by David @ 9:55 am
R. Lee Ermey in the role that catapulted him into legend. “What is your major malfunction, numbnuts?” Filed under: Movie Image and People: Stanley Kubrick Comments: None |
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Posted on 10.05.09 by David @ 9:16 am
Isaac Hayes demonstrates his subtle interrogation techniques. Filed under: Movie Image and People: Isaac Hayes Comments: None |
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Posted on 09.24.09 by David @ 11:59 am
Ong Bak 2, starring and directed by Tony Jaa, is set for release on October 23, 2009 in the US. Filed under: People: Tony Jaa and Movie Image Comments: None |
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Posted on 09.14.09 by David @ 3:30 pm
“Ken Marshall leads his men from the Canyon of the Firemares, giant horses able to travel a thousand leagues in a single day.” Filed under: Movie Image Comments: None |
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Posted on 09.04.09 by David @ 5:05 pm
Filed under: Movie Image and People: Stanley Kubrick Comments: 1 Comment |
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