MOVIE REVIEW
Killer Joe (2012)
Skip Bolen/
2012 Seattle International Film Festival
William Friedkin's broiling film version of "Killer Joe" is uncompromising, uncompromised and alluringly grubby, catching all the black comedy laid out for the taking in Tracy Letts's play while mining a few new seams of Southern-fried dysfunction to boot. Collaborating again after "Bug" — which stared unswervingly into two unhappy people coming unglued in a closed room — they turn "Killer Joe" into a broader farce: a film prepared to admit that whole families can go so far off the rails that the only fair response is to laugh at the poor tortured bastards and learn.
Continue reading “Malice, Texas” »
Stone Angels
David Cronenberg's skills as an adapter of existing stories (eight of his movies have originated in other works, says a back-of-the-envelope calculation, even without counting "The Fly") are seeming more robust than ever, as he moves away from body horror and dives deeper into the life of the mind. And it's appropriate that, after "A Dangerous Method" dramatized debates about human sexual drives in the form of two erudite talking heads, he should tackle Don DeLillo's "Cosmopolis," in which a deeply disturbed young man wanders off the edge of sanity under his own steam, talking constantly while articulating hardly anything definable at all.
Continue reading “The Value of Nothing” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Last Circus (2010)
Diego López Calvín/Tornasol Films
Staking an immediate claim as the most delirious cinematic fever of whichever year it may eventually see the light of day, "The Last Circus" is unhinged. Directed by Álex de la Iglesia in a style which knows no restraint, it sets off at a mad sprint through a borderline-tasteless allegory of the Spanish Civil War and then just barrels straight ahead. It lassos echoes of the country's subsequent history into an overheated and baroque revenge tragedy, in which a pair of disfigured amoral circus clowns blaze away at each other with automatic weapons until narrative logic is a distant memory. None of which should be taken as a complaint.
Continue reading “Laugh, Clown, Laugh” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Divide (2011)
2011 SXSW Conferences & Festivals
"The Divide" plays to its strengths and doesn't chicken out of its logical conclusion; so as post-apocalyptic sci-fi downers go, it certainly has the courage of its throat-slitting, bone-snapping convictions. It also runs straight into the inherent nihilism problem. The idea that human beings are feral embittered creeps with morals and values that crumble under stress until "Lord of the Flies" looks like a nursery rhyme is cathartic, resonant and a path that has been worn smooth. It's a closed loop of narrative from which all surprise has drained.
Continue reading “Apocalypse Again” »
TELEVISION REVIEW | 'PAGE EIGHT'
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011
"Page Eight" feels like a throwback to an earlier, wordier kind of British spy drama, the kind in which M.I.5 bristles inwardly over not knowing all the facts and character actors from the Commonwealth arrive in shifts to deal with double agents over a double brandy. In short it feels like a slice of quality BBC television, and with good reason.
Marking David Hare's return to directing full-length feature films after many years, "Page Eight" has faith in the subtle powers of actors such as Bill Nighy, Judy Davis and Alice Krige to convey annoyance about a broken paper trail with a glance or anxiety over familial strife with a sigh. As long as your requirements of an espionage story don't insist on something blowing up, all this is very refreshing.
Continue reading “The Establishment Club” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Perfect Sense (2011)
2011 Sundance Film Festival
The sheer clarity of intent and scale of ambition in David Mackenzie's "Perfect Sense" is more than enough to obliterate the memory of his Hollywood misstep "Spread" as if it had never existed. Light years away from that film's glib delve into the lifestyles of adolescents whose world was too beautiful to care about, "Perfect Sense" is an icy fable about adults whose world has decided to shrug them off completely and start afresh.
Continue reading “Sense and Insensibility” »
Edinburgh International Film Festival
Since the Edinburgh International Film Festival's move from August to June, the films and guests available in the early summer slot have fallen nicely for the headline writers, culminating in last year's double whammy of "Antichrist" and "The Hurt Locker." This year fate was less kind, and the absence of true talking points only emphasized that most of the higher profile films were days away from wide release — though some ("Get Low," "Winter's Bone") were excellent. There was more action down in the festival's low-budget laboratories; but there, the trend to instantly dismiss exactly the kind of films that resist instant dismissal was in full effect. With odd vibes at the top and bottom, the result was a festival with a mild identity crisis.
Continue reading “Edinburgh International Film Festival ’10: Notes From the Underground” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Lola (2010)
Swift Productions/Tribeca Film Festival
Two years ago I watched Brillante Mendoza's "Foster Child" at Edinburgh, an experience that could not have been more bracing if the director had turned up and slapped me in person. This year his "Lola" had a similar effect. Mr. Mendoza's welding of documentary staging and local color onto angry agitprop is a style which looks like no style at all — until the bruises start to rise. He is the master of the confrontational whisper.
Continue reading “The Granny Diaries” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Winter's Bone (2010)
Sebastian Mlynarski/Roadside Attractions
Deep in the Ozarks, where it seems betrayal of your neighbor is the worst crime of all and most justice is natural justice, teenager Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) needs to find her missing father before her family and two young siblings are evicted from their home. Determined to discover what's happened to him, Ree starts asking pointed questions of her in-laws and won't take no for an answer.
Continue reading “Mother Courage” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Extra Man (2010)
Magnolia Pictures
New York's Upper East Side is lit up similar to a pinball machine in "The Extra Man," the natural home of chancers, eccentrics, predators and fruitcakes of every flavor. Clearly part of some universe not quite our own, the place exerts a magnetic pull on the loosely wound, the kind of neighborhood where fantasist and occasional gigolo Henry Harrison (Kevin Kline) can roam free without being chased down the street by men in white coats.
Continue reading “Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless” »