8 years ago
All posts by Andy Crump
“The Raid 2: Berandal”: Character Through Action, Action Through Drama
Self-congratulatory types may observe The Raid 2: Berandal in terms of its smorgasbord of cinematic influences, and pat themselves on the back for catching its touchstones: the A Better Tomorrow and Infernal Affairs trilogies, the filmography of Johnnie To, Th...
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“Nymph()maniac: Vol. I”: Lars Von Trier Waves His Freak Flag
Reviewing Danish troublemaker Lars von Trier's latest film, Nymph()maniac feels like nothing more than a fool's errand. That's partially because the movie opening in theaters this Friday is just the first half of the entire production, whose second entry relea...
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“On My Way” Hurries Along Slowly
Peaks and valleys; that's the basic structure of French road trip film On My Way. As with January's Gloria, the official Chilean entry for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Academy Awards, On My Way revolves around the mid-life crisis of its protagonis...
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“The Face of Love” Will Give You Vertigo
In the first act of suspense-driven melodrama The Face of Love, protagonist Nikki (Annette Bening) converses with her daughter, Summer (Jess Weixler), expressing her concerns over the younger woman's relationship; like any good mother, Nikki doesn't want her c...
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Don’t Look Inside “The Bag Man”
Growing up on a steady, diverse stream of cinema is one major prerequisite to becoming a filmmaker. Equally important, however, is the possession of personal vision. David Grovic, the first-time director of Cinedigm's The Bag Man, clearly has the former requir...
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“Two Lives” & The Third Reich’s Continued Legacy
Even though we're many years beyond the Holocaust and its endless horrors, we can still detect tremors of its seismic impact today. This thought must have, at one point or another, crossed the mind of German filmmaker Georg Maas, who borrows liberally from a p...
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‘In Secret’ Fails To Scandalize
Very early on in its running time, In Secret taunt us with licentious promise; our heroine, Therese (Elizabeth Olsen), sneaks off to a riverbank, conceals herself in underbrush, and quietly masturbates as she watches a brawny laborer sweep away pesky weeds wit...
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‘That Awkward Moment’ When A Film Doesn’t Live Up To Its Title
If you've watched the red-band trailer for freshman director Tom Gormican's That Awkward Moment, then you've already seen most of its titular embarrassments unfold on screen. That's sort of a shame; That Awkward Moment is many things, but it's never all that s...
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‘Lone Survivor’: Dishonoring The Fallen
There are two halves to Peter Berg's new film, an adaptation of former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell's nonfiction novel Lone Survivor, that make approaching its content difficult at best: one represents the face of the picture that amounts to slickly made glorific...
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Director Joe Swanberg Talks ‘Drinking Buddies’, Collaboration, and Craft Brewing
Better late than never, right? Drinking Buddies hit iTunes on July 25th, made a go at its theatrical run on August 23rd, and played the festival circuit for months before either of those dates, but Joe Swanberg's latest only opened up in Boston this past Frida...
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