9 years ago
Reviews (10 posts found)
“Medeas”
Arthouse fare nestled within the American heartland is, and probably always shall be, considered Terrence Malick's territory. Hence early analogies drawn between Andrea Pallaoro’s excellent debut, Medeas, and the American maestro's works, currently enjoying a ...
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“Taken 3”
Taken 3 is a movie in which no one's really taken. At least not in the fashion of Taken and Taken 2: you know, someone gets kidnapped and then resident badass Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) shows the abductors all. No one in Taken 3 seems to have any “particular se...
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“Farewell, Herr Schwarz”
Human beings rewrite their personal and shared memories endlessly. History is a frighteningly fluid thing. It can be reshaped not just by the agendas of people and groups but by previously buried information. Both forms of historical rewriting are in play and ...
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“Dark Summer”
A film that uses DJ Caruso’s career as a reference point is a film that starts out in dire straits indeed. Hence Paul Solet’s Dark Summer, a horror riff on Disturbia, which is itself a riff on Rear Window. Like Caruso, Solet is using Hitchcock’s work as his bl...
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“Predestination”
On an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the results of a temporal anomaly puts one of the main cast face-to-face with an attractive woman he believes could be one of his maternal ancestors. The thought hits him: what if he was destined to travel back in t...
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“A Most Violent Year”
Watching JC Chandor’s expertly crafted period crime drama A Most Violent Year, it’s likely you’ll say to yourself, “this is good, but I feel like I’ve seen it before.” This is an understandable reaction, and one that might even persist after the film’s explosi...
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“The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness”
Spectres of the past line the halls of Studio Ghibli. The frames of The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, Mami Sunada’s documentary about the studio’s rush to complete Hayao Miyazaki’s 2013 film The Wind Rises, are decorated with them. A sketch of Kiki hovers ove...
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“Leviathan”
Leviathan, the pitch-black new film from Elena director Andrey Zvyagintsev, is bookended by montages of startling, almost cosmically withering imagery. Chilled to prehistoric temperature in the blues and grays of Mikhail Krichman’s photography, it opens wide i...
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“Big Eyes”
The anarchic id of late-20th-century Hollywood with a funhouse of singular films to prove it, Tim Burton hasn’t, alas, been regarded with much favor of late. Indifferent to the notion of growing up, he’s become the whipping boy for critics who’ve mistaken an a...
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“Into The Woods”
Into The Woods is excellent proof that we, as a society, need to rise up and stop Rob Marshall from directing a movie ever again. This long-gestating adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical, a knowing and prescient blend of fairy tale characters from Cinder...
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