7 years ago
All posts by Jake Cole
“The Immigrant” Displays James Gray At His Best
The bronze color filter of The Immigrant stands apart from the romanticized sepias that typically shade period films. Its yellow-brown hue is grimy and dirty, as if shot through industrial pollution instead of an ancient lens. The skies around Ellis Island and...
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Gia Coppola Sparks Teen Angst Pizzazz in Directorial Debut “Palo Alto”
The common charge leveled at the Coppola progeny - that they are the beneficiaries of nepotism that not only gets them movie deals but results in films about the insular wealthy - will no doubt be applied to Gia Coppola’s feature debut Palo Alto. Within the fi...
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“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” Swings And Misses
On the basis of its first two films, Marc Webb’s reboot franchise of Spider-Man manages not only to wallow in superhero cliché but in that of the teen indie. Peter Parker’s self-doubt and petulance have been crucial traits of the character since his inception ...
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ATLFF Review: “Metalhead”
For a genre predicated on outlandish shows of hypermasculinity, heavy metal comes second only to goth as the form of music whose practitioners and fans most regularly air their feelings of sadness and isolation. From the Tolkien-cribbing lyrics of Led Zeppelin...
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Blu-Ray Review: “A Field in England”
With its period setting during the English Civil War and its increasingly abstract visual schema, A Field in England is Ben Wheatley’s most ambitious film to date. The film retains Wheatley’s chatty, grimly humorous style, but where his other films slowly tilt...
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ATLFF Review: “The Double”
Richard Ayoade’s debut film, Submarine was a promising feature limited by its restrictive fealty to its influences, which makes the considerably more successful The Double all the more surprising. Not only does it rely on the fractal psychological state of Dos...
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ATLFF Review: “45RPM” Is A Garage Rock Discovery
The following is a review from the Atlanta Film Festival, running March 28-April 6.
The story of a struggling young artist embarking on a journey of self-discovery in the name of finding an obscure vinyl single recorded by her deceased father, Juli Jackson’...
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“Sabotage”: A Promising Return to Form For Arnold Schwarzenegger
Sabotage begins with low-fi footage of a woman in close-up being tortured as she wails for help that will never come, and it never gets any more pleasant from there. Following in the wake of End of Watch, the film only deepens co-writer/director David Ayer’s c...
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“Veronica Mars”: TV’s Cult Favorite Returns on the Big Screen with Pleasant Results
Though a significant portion of its fanbase came late to the party (including this writer), Veronica Mars launched out of the gate 10 years ago this September with one of the few unimpeachable seasons of modern network TV. Its combination of post-Buffy genre a...
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Blu-Ray Review: “Commitment”
Commitment is not the first acting vehicle for Choi Seung-hyun, better known as Big Bang member and solo star T.O.P., but it is his first since K-pop at last broke internationally, borne out by the focus that even the PR for English-language markets has placed...
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