Film

WHO’S USING WHOM? A formidable debut film by director Jonathan Garfinkel, Six Acts follows the exploits of Gili (Sivan Levy) – a poor, rube-ish, and not very beautiful teenage girl who’s just transferred to a hip new high school – as she is manipulated by the rich and popular boys into becoming a sex toy…

JUST A FLESH WOUND Starring the always brilliant Sam Rockwell, the noirish backwoods thriller A Single Shot, directed by David M. Rosenthal, follows a down and out John Moon (Mr. Rockwell) as his life spirals into an abyss after he accidentally kills a young woman and finds a case full of money. The film starts…

SNUFF PORN, BUT WITHOUT THE SEX Zoe Bell (of Death Proof fame) plays Sabrina, an ex-soldier forced to fight for her life in Josh Waller’s Raze, which, except for a clever little twist at the beginning and generally well-orchestrated fight sequences, is pretty much as idiotic as movies get. The premise of Robert Beaucage’s inane…

NATURALISM AT ITS BEST There seems to be a tendency for fledgling directors making their first narrative features to limit themselves to low-key realism. But whereas so many of these creations end up being dull, flat, and redundant statements, Claudio Giovannesi’s Alì Blue Eyes, though awash in realism, is a captivating, insightful and truthful portrait of…

THE RELUCTANT FILMMAKERS Director Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist tells of how Changez (Riz Ahmed), a young Pakistani, goes from being an ambitious, pro-American executive at an elite Wall Street financial firm to a college professor at a Pakistani university who criticizes US policy and may possibly be involved with terrorists. This thriller disguised as…

BACKWATER BLUES Lesley (Amy Morton), a school bus driver, gets distracted by a bluebird while inspecting her bus at the end of her shift and fails to notice a little boy asleep in one of the rear seats. The ramifications of this are the subject of Lance Edmands’ feature directorial debut Bluebird. Grim, cold and…

ALMOST Directed by Phil Morrison (of the  2005 indie hit Junebug), Almost Christmas stars Paul Giamatti and Paul Rudd as two former small-time Canadian thieves Dennis and Rene, who take a truck full of Christmas trees to New York City with hopes of selling them and making some much needed cash. Mr. Morrison’s gentle direction infuses…

THE DISHARMONY OF FORCED UNDERSTATEMENT Set in a village in the hinterlands of Kazakhstan, Harmony Lessons centers around a young teenager named Aslan (Timur Aidarbekov), who washes obsessively and executes cockroaches in novel ways. A poor loner and outcast who lives with his grandmother, Aslan goes to a school dominated by a classmate named Bolat…

MALICK IN WONDERLAND Here’s a fun discussion for sitting around the cinematic campfire: are the worst films by the best directors still better than 80 percent of what is released?   Are say, Bringing Out the Dead or The Hudsucker Proxy still relative carrots for the eyes when compared to the Transformer movies? Terrence Malick’s To…

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE? Things begin in the 60s in Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep. A group of radicals knock off a bank in Michigan. The ringleader, shown in dusty old FBI wanted posters, looks remarkably like The Sundance Kid. Who are those guys? That’s the question the Feds are asking, and…

WHERE’S THE MAGIC? Whatever positives and negatives lay within The Incredible Burt Wonderstone  – the latest Steve Carell mass-market comedy  – all I could do was wonder what happened to Steve Buscemi and the Coen Brothers. At one time Buscemi was arguably the foremost actor associated with the reticent Minnesota siblings, playing roles in all five of…

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…