Film

WHEN HISTORY IS NOT ENOUGH A series of releases in the last few months – Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Lincoln – have highlighted the ever-present conundrum of historical depiction in film, especially in regards to accuracy and storytelling. One film was threatened with Congressional investigations over its portrayal, and another took vast liberties with the…

FUN WITH SLAVERY A couple of questionable dramatic decisions aside, Django Unchained  is a very entertaining film, boasting some outstanding performances, limber and witty direction, and a dynamic (and now Oscar-winning) script with an abundance of sharp dialogue. Quentin Tarantino’s latest invention is a wish-fulfillment fantasy – an American hero movie – a western modeled on…

THINGS ARE DEAD ALL OVER Summit Entertainment, the company that brought the Twilight series to the big screen, continues to explore horror film dating options with the satire Warm Bodies – an inevitability considering America’s love affair with zombies and hot teenage vampires. This RrrrrRomeo and Juliet story, based on the Isaac Marion novel, mashes…

SWAN IN LOVE More than most families, the Coppolas deserve credit for keeping Hollywood honest.   Roman Coppola has written and/or produced a couple of Wes Anderson movies, as well as assistant directing for his more successful father and sister and creating his own independent work.   In the fight against corporate banality he is one of…

BIGELOW  STAYS AT WAR The better part of the last decade saw Iraq War movie after Iraq War movie bite the dust. Something was off. Those war films continued to miss their mark until The Hurt Locker,   the first Middle Eastern war film from screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow. What was the difference? The…

MECHANICAL BUT EFFECTIVE Any review of Michael Haneke’s Amour should start by noting what a moving story it tells. Did I cry during Amour? Two-ply tissues. Amour gives a gentle but chilling view into the final months of a woman’s life, and the frustration of a husband who must care for his loved one as…

WEIGHED DOWN BY GLITTERING JEWELS Over-conceived and under-emoted, Joe Wright’s experimental Anna Karenina is art-directed to within both an inch of brilliance and an inch of death. This version of the Tolstoy novel indulges the British in three of their favorite pastimes: Stage, adapting novels, and pretending they’re Russian without actually performing Russian accents (how…

DISHONET ABE Historical movies are often made as historical parallel. They comment on our time as much as their time. On some level this is the inevitable nature of history – taking from the past what is necessary to explain the present. Historical parallel clearly seems to be the intention of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, which…

BOND TO THE PAST And as the fog rolls in across the Scottish moors, the old woman turns to the young friend she had recently ordered to his death. He grew up an orphan, now wrinkled. She asks how his parents died. There is a moment of hesitation, then a slant in his voice. “You…

THE JOKE’S ON WHO? As a story, The Comedy is as blunt as its title, devoting 94 unrelenting minutes of character development to a man-boy whose development and character are equally questionable. Tasked with bringing some sense of soul to the dead-eyed, over-privileged slacker Swanson, Tim Heidecker (the Tim half of Adult Swim’s Tim and…

LIFE OF GRAHAM IS NOT A DOCUMENTARY; NOR IS IT A GOOD FILM The appropriately but un-succinctly titled A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman in 3D (or any D for that matter) is dead on arrival. Its inventive approach to employ seventeen distinctive animation styles sounds promising but soon grows…

MAP OF THE AGES Cloud Atlas, the latest effort from the Wachowskis, wraps a half-dozen stories, settings, and groups of characters into one film. But it doesn’t matter how many stories they do, their song remains the same. The Matrix helmers have hit the same point for a while now: Liberty is the freedom from…