Film

THE SUN DOESN’T RISE Set in Mumbai, Partho Sen-Gupta’s Sunrise seems ostensibly to be about the child sex trade in India; in fact it appears to be more concerned with exploring the mental state of Lakshman Joshi (Adil Hussain from Life of Pi), a law enforcement officer in charge of finding missing/kidnapped children, whose own…

MORTENSEN SHINES IN FAR FROM MEN The more I watch Viggo Mortensen act the more I enjoy his performances; there is something inherently compelling about the dichotomy between his ruggedly handsome leading-man shell and the awkwardness and vulnerability one senses on second glance coming from within. I empathize with his characters as I would with…

TASTY POISONOUS APPLESAUCE Written, directed and starring the delightful and multitalented Onur Tukel, the dark comedy Applesauce centers on the conflicts that arise between two hip married Brooklyn couples in their 30s after the spouses make the mistake of revealing to each other “the worst thing they’ve ever done.” Oh, and somebody is sending one…

AS DULL AS ITS SUBJECTS Necktie Youth, scripted and directed by Sibs Shongwe-La Mer and shot in black and white, follows aimless 20-something acquaintances from upper-middle-class families in a South African suburb as they hang out, party, get high, and talk and talk and talk about how nobody really cares about anybody else; all of…

PASSIVE APPROACH MAKES FOR SUPERFICIAL DOCUMENTARY We are a fly on the wall in Jody Lee Lipes’ documentary Ballet 422, which follows 25-year-old New York City Ballet (NYCB) dancer and emerging choreographer Justin Peck as he stages his first ballet for that company. From first rehearsal to world premiere, there are no talking heads, no…

WARMTH FROM SNOW A photogenic family on a skiing holiday makes a terrible discovery during an avalanche, when one of the parents reveals a potentially dangerous lack of character. The kids are traumatized, and the family undergoes a crisis of faith. The shamed one and the frightened partner are counseled if not comforted by friends…

EVERYTHING NEW WAVE IS OLD AGAIN I have never enjoyed watching a dog roll in shit as much as I did in the middle of Goodbye to Language. Every other time, I’ve been as horrified as any anal retentive bourgeois. But this Jean-Luc Godard essay, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes and the National…

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…