Film

WOODY  OR WON’T HE? The new independent film Manhattan Romance, about the romantic relationships of New York City hipsters, centers on Danny (Tom O’Brien), a video editor who is trying to complete his no-budget camcorder documentary about the romantic relationships of New York City hipsters. Written and directed by the multitalented Mr. O’Brien, the movie boasts…

A LIGHT ON THE DARK Combining a pop history of black American photography with a glimpse at the director’s own family photo albums, Thomas Allen Harris’s Through a Lens Darkly manages to be both agenda-heavy and fairly entertaining. Like its credited inspiration, Deborah Willis’s book Reflections in Black, this film begins with the premise that…

THE CONTEMPTIBLES In writer/director Alex Ross Perry’s new film Listen Up Philip, the always excellent Jason Schwartzman plays Philip, an egotistical and bitter young writer who’s just had his second book published. But with his dream of literary success coming to fruition he feels as miserable as ever. Just then Ike Zimmerman (the great Jonathan…

LAST YEAR’S BIGGEST STORY IN THE WORLD For a movie that spends several cloak-and-dagger days during June 2013 inside that famous Hong Kong hotel room with NSA contractor Edward Snowden and Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, journalist/filmmaker Laura Poitras’s Citizenfour is a surprisingly dull watch. Snowden is a photogenic young man of great eloquence, in his…

“PLATEAU OF POSITIVITY” If you’re not into watching groundbreaking, legendary, nearly century-old jazz musicians tenderly calling each other “motherfucker” while helping to train the next generation of high-end artists, this may not be the documentary for you. If on the other hand you are a fan of inspirational films that manage not to cloy while…

A BLAST OF THE RED HOT MAMA “I believe in tit for tat.   And if that’s not true, someone owes me a lot of tat!” – Sophie Tucker A good line, if you’re Kathy Griffin, Lisa Lampanelli, or Roseanne Barr living in 2014.   But if you’re Sophie Tucker, breaking into show biz during the Teddy…

IN THE LAND OF MUNDANE FILMMAKING, SUBJECT MATTER IS KING Having difficulty making ends meet fixing broken zippers on the streets of New Delhi, Mehendra (Rajesh Tailang) sends his 12-year-old son Siddharth to work at a factory in a distant city for a month. But when the boy doesn’t return as scheduled and his parents…

ENDLESS SUMMER Michael Tully, the writer and director of Ping Pong Summer, seems like a sweet guy, so I’ll try and be brief. Sitting through his movie, which attempts to both imitate and parody the 1980’s American coming-of-age formula film, feels like a punishment; imagine chewing soap or drinking castor oil for 90 minutes. With…

“I TOLD YOU SO” The drawling aristocratic lethargy of Gore Vidal’s public manner would have seemed cartoonish if not for the darting intelligence in his eyes and his words.   For all its craft – crown of the head tipped back, the long pointed nose elegantly spearing something in you, the indulgent but disapproving wag of…

THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS Most good actors need some help to be excellent – Nicholas Cage comes to mind, Kevin Spacey, the young Mickey Rourke. And then there are those few who are mesmerizing no matter what they are doing. Jesse Eisenberg is one of these brilliant rarities, fascinating to…

YET ANOTHER STUDY OF SUBURBAN TEENS It’s difficult to make a successful first feature, even for one who comes from cinematic royalty, as Palo Alto demonstrates. Writer/director Gia Coppola’s film, based on a short story collection of the same name by James Franco (who also acts in the film), is by no means a disaster….

EMPTY CALORIES Chef concerns Carl, a successful L.A. chef who finds he must reinvent himself after a Twitter fight with an important critic goes viral. First, let me tell you what I like of the film written, directed and starring Jon Favreau. Number one: Jon Favreau. I fell in love with him as an actor…

MAKING IT IN MOROCCO Set in Tangier, writer/director Sean Gullette’s admirable debut feature Traitors follows Malika (Chaimae Ben Acha), a rebellious young woman from a struggling, working-class family, who is trying to get her all-female punk band off the ground. When a producer offers her a chance to cut a demo, provided she can pay…

DOES ANYONE FEEL A DRAFT? With two first-round picks in the 2012 NFL draft, the Cleveland Browns were favorites to trade up to the No. 2 overall pick and land the rights to Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III. They were outbid by the Washington Redskins, whom Griffin would lead to the playoffs. The Browns…

GRAND Enough with the Wes Anderson-bashing. It’s as if, in having an imagination, Anderson has committed a crime. Can we just sweep words like “quirky” and “whimsy” under the bed? I’m thinking “dollhouse” could also burn to the ground or get tossed out the window like Jeff Goldblum’s unlucky cat in Anderson’s latest film. Are…

THE WRIGHT STUFF In this highly stylized adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s sci-fi novel The Futurological Congress, Robin Wright stars as herself, but the scenario is different. She’s still the aging star of the classic films Princess Bride and Forrest Gump, but her career has taken a long, slow dump because of her frequent need to…

NOT MONUMENTAL In theory, George Clooney’s The Monuments Men tries to tell the story of the “greatest treasure hunt of all time” – the race by U.S. Army art curators to save European art gems from Nazi looting and destruction. In practice, it becomes a movie about old men in jeeps, asking for directions. The…

EXTERIOR. NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR. The 1980 William Friedkin movie Cruising sent Al Pacino undercover for the NYPD, threatened not by other cops as in Serpico but by the gay S&M scene.   The butch detective questions his own persona once he starts identifying with the “other,” providing the story’s real interest within a banal cops-and-robbers framework.  …