6 years ago
All posts by Noah Gittell
“Foxcatcher”
In the films of Bennett Miller, the truth is in the silence. The indelible image of Capote is of Philip Seymour Hoffman sitting forward in his seat, listening and trying to comprehend the mind of a murderer. In Moneyball, it's the silence around the scouting t...
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New York Film Festival Review: Richard Gere Unconvincing in “Time Out of Mind”
If you believe one of film’s most important social objectives is to foster empathy – to allow the audience to walk in the shoes of someone they never would get to know in real life – then it is hard to dislike a film about homelessness. The homeless remain the...
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New York Film Festival Review: Timothy Spall Brings Mike Leigh’s “Mr. Turner” To Life
What makes a great opening shot of a film? It could simply be beautiful to look at, or intriguing enough to hook you into the story. Better still, it could perfectly distill a film’s themes into a single, compelling image. By any of these measures, the opening...
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Isolationism and Cinema
What does Obama’s commencement speech at West Point have in common with X-Men: Days of Future Past? More than you think. Despite his protestations, Obama’s speech has been cast by his critics as a push for isolationism. “[A]ccording to self-described realists,...
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Why It’s So Hard to Blame Gun Violence on the Movies
Earlier this week, Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday responded to the crimes of Elliot Rodger by writing a thoughtful op-ed about the pervasive influence of the systemic misogyny in Hollywood. She called out one film by name - Neighbors – which caused s...
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A New Era of Hollywood Scandals?
When the allegations that director Bryan Singer drugged and raped a 17-year-old boy in 1999 recently came to light, moviegoers who were looking forward to his upcoming film, X-Men: Days of Future Past, were confronted with a series of difficult questions: Shou...
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“Joe” Lets David Gordon Green Out Of His Cage
The rural American South is quickly becoming the setting of choice for filmmakers looking to tell gritty, authentic stories. Last year, there was Jeff Nichols’ Mud, set in a poor Arkansas river town, and this year, HBO’s True Detective set its Southern Gothic ...
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The Case Against Wes Anderson
There is a shot in the first reel of Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel that will feel awfully familiar to devotees of the Anderson canon. Hotel concierge Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) walks down a long hallway off the lobby of the film’s titular hotel, and ...
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How “RoboCop” Lost Its Political Edge
In this Era of Remakes, it is rare to find a film whose subject matter actually deserves to be re-examined. Most of the time, movie studios simply take a popular property, cast a couple of young stars in it, and update a few of the details. Robocop could have ...
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Have Urban Critics Gotten ‘Labor Day’ Wrong?
If you are a frequent visitor to your local multiplex, you have might have noticed that there has been a serious dearth of movies about small-town American life these days. Last year’s Nebraska notwithstanding, Hollywood just doesn’t seem interested in telling...
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