9 years ago
Reviews (10 posts found)
“Under the Skin”: Extraterrestrial Earth
J. Hoberman said of Eraserhead: “[It’s] not a movie I’d drop acid for, although I would consider it a revolutionary act if someone dropped a reel of it into the middle of Star Wars.” Those comments could just as easily apply to Under the Skin. Jonathan Glazer’...
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Knowing “Alan Partridge”: The British DJ’s Big-Screen Debut Forgets What He’s All About
You could say Alan Partridge was made for the Internet Age. The British comedy persona, a disc jockey from Norfolk and disastrous one-time BBC chat presenter, is a real new media junkie. Pushing sixty at this point, Partridge has relaunched himself on the late...
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“Dom Hemingway” Is All Swagger
Dom Hemingway (Jude Law) is an angry man. He's just been released from prison after serving a 12-year stretch as a fall guy for his gangster boss Mr. Fontaine (Demian Bichir). Dom's been a good soldier, he's kept his mouth shut. After twelve years, Dom has a l...
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No Retirement for Entertaining Marvel Sequel, “Captain America: The Winter Solider”
"Captain America retires! " Such scandalous news made headlines in the American media a few days ago. Chris Evans, one of the key players in the Marvel-inspired film universe, announced that he's abandoning acting indefinitely in favor of directing. The reason...
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“Finding Vivian Maier”: A Disconnect Between Form and Content
There is a conundrum that film critics often face while writing about documentary cinema: although form and content are perhaps more easily separable in documentary films, they are also significantly easier to conflate in criticism. Meaning fiction films are r...
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Aronofsky’s “Noah” Can’t Keep Its Head Above Water
Love him or hate him, Darren Aronofsky has always been a filmmaker with vision. Be it in the unrelenting close-ups and quick-cuts of Requiem for a Dream, the body-horror of Black Swan or the breathtaking celestial sights of The Fountain, he’s a director who re...
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“Breathe In”: Tepid Romance From Drake Doremus
Director Drake Doremus showed early signs of promise with Like Crazy, the 2011 Sundance Grand Jury prize winner that offered glimpses of a new age no-holds barred love story, but ended up registering as a dopey romance that failed to burrow deep into its chara...
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“Cesar Chavez” – No, No Puede
There are thousands - nay, tens of thousands - of true stories out there that are more than prime for being made into a feature film, but still haven't primarily because they are about people with more melanin than Hollywood is comfortable with. One such story...
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“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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