7 years ago
All posts by Jake Cole
Spotlight on Fandor: “The Deep Blue Sea”
Terence Davies’s films function so completely as works of personal memory that the director’s gift for vividly detailed period recreation turns history itself into mere context for a life lived. This is especially true of the autobiographical first phase of hi...
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Blu-ray Review: “Every Man for Himself”
Jean-Luc Godard’s so-called “second first film” isn’t really a patented return to zero, even if it does betray flashes of modern and postmodern references to Breathless. Techniques honed on video crop up throughout, and the tone is clearly that of an older, mo...
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“Jupiter Ascending”
Jupiter Ascending is a film with all of the usual trappings of the Hero of a Thousand Faces narrative—an unremarkable underdog thrust into the great fire of destiny, with outcast advisors and monomaniacal villains peppered throughout the journey—rendered as so...
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Outback Antonioni: “Picnic at Hanging Rock” at 40
“Only a million years ago,” a teacher says of the formation of the eponymous landmark of Picnic at Hanging Rock as she escorts schoolgirls there on a field trip. Like that mass of volcanic stone, Peter Weir’s 40-year-old film is relatively young, yet it presen...
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Blu-ray Review: “John Wick”
John Wick leaps into motion with such swift, shameless emotional manipulation that the whole thing threatens to collapse into self-parody before it can begin. The eponymous hero (Keanu Reeves) watches tapes of his late wife in a flash-forward, and he even rece...
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Blu-ray Review: “The Zero Theorem”
Distributor: Well Go USA
Release Date: January 20, 2015
MSRP: $29.98
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Film: C- / Video: B+ / Audio: B / Extras: C-
The Zero Theorem begs comparisons to Terry Gilliam’s magnum opus, the ornate dystopian epic Brazil, from the word go: It feat...
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“Appropriate Behavior”
Appropriate Behavior begins with a small declaration of priorities. As Shirin (Desiree Akhavan) takes the last of her boxes out of her ex-girlfriend’s apartment, drops them into the nearest dumpster, sees a strap-on in the top box, and decides to take it with ...
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Blu-ray Review: “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant”
Distributor: The Criterion Collection
Release Date: January 13, 2015
MSRP: $39.99
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Film: A / Video: A / Audio: B+ / Extras: B-
We meet fashion designer Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen) when her live-in partner/S&M sub Marlene (Irm Her...
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Blu-ray Review: Portrait of Jason
Distributor: Milestone Films
Release Date: November 11, 2014
MSRP: $39.99
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Film: A / Video: B- / Audio: B+ / Extras: A-
Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason may be the quintessential verité film, yet from its opening, deliberately unfocused s...
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Blu-ray Review: “Safe”
Distributor: The Criterion Collection
Release Date: December 9, 2014
MSRP: $39.99
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Film: A / Video: A / Audio: B+ / Extras: A-
Safe begins with a sense of retreat, the camera pointed through the windshield of a car as it traverses Californi...
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