MOVIE REVIEW
Captain Phillips (2013)
Hopper Stone/Columbia Pictures
Critics are probably giddy at the prospect of making seasickness the gag line of their “Captain Phillips” reviews, given that handheld camerawork is the stock in trade of director Paul Greengrass. All joking aside, consider it fair warning, as one could conceivably get queasy before Tom Hanks’s eponymous captain even sets sail. Once at sea, the photography actually seems placid, perhaps because you’ve grown accustomed to the shakiness or it simply pales in comparison to the relentlessly turbulent unfolding of this fact-based drama about the 2009 Somali pirates’ hijacking of the container ship Maersk Alabama.
Continue reading “On Stranger Tides” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Great Beauty (2013)
Gianni Fiorito/Pathé Distribution
When Peter Greenaway gazed at Rome back in 1987 for “The Belly of an Architect,” he pointed his near-stationary camera towards it from a distance, until the static accumulating from this God’s-eye view nearly caused the screen to bow outward at the sides. Paolo Sorrentino does things differently, and “The Great Beauty” hews close to the affluent end of the Eternal City’s citizenry and shares their perspectives instead. Mr. Sorrentino is interested in the effect that people have on their city rather than the reverse process, and his Rome is built on networks of vaguely mournful parties and nightclubs and middle-aged hedonists; a seemingly fragile base for so much history to find itself standing on. The resident Lord of Misrule Silvio Berlusconi never actually turns up, but lurks around every corner.
Continue reading “Tales of the City” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Magic Magic (2013)
Andrés Gachón/2013 Sundance Film Festival
Sebastián Silva's "Magic Magic" starts off as it means to go on, in a very affected state of agitation. The camera hovers nervously around characters at waist height or below, apparently unable to look them in the eye; a brusque title card flashes on screen for a nanosecond before the camera returns to bothering someone's Skechers. Notionally a horror film, "Magic Magic" lays on the visual alienation tactics in large dollops, nearly turning into something potentially more interesting: a story built of nothing but constant fret and friction between a group of acquaintances (clearly not friends) on a Chilean road trip, where the internal stresses reach such a pitch that even the strongest of them shows signs of climbing the walls. By that point the weakest has already gone round the bend.
Continue reading “Friends Without Benefits” »
MOVIE REVIEW
A Field in England (2013)
Dean Rogers/Picturehouse Entertainment
Ben Wheatley has steadily established himself as a director of considerable craft, boundless diversity and unabashed ambition; seemingly as comfortable helming an occultist horror thriller (“Kill List”) as he is a pitch-black comedy (“Sightseers”). For his fourth full feature, Mr. Wheatley turns his hand to 17th-century English Civil War psychedelia with “A Field in England,” a baffling but brave sojourn into the fantastical.
Continue reading “A Psychedelic Trip, Down History Lane” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Wolverine (2013)
Ben Rothstein/20th Century Fox
Be it James Mangold or Darren Aronofsky in the director’s chair, Christopher McQuarrie or Mark Bomback on script writing duties, this is very much Hugh Jackman’s vision of how Wolverine should be.
The actor has pushed hard for this particular version of Wolverine to be committed to film, and now his wish has been granted. Supposedly based on a collection of comics from Frank Miller and Chris Claremont loosely known as the Japan Saga, “The Wolverine” transports Logan to Tokyo where he clashes both with the culture and the local yakuza.
Continue reading “The Lashing Samurai” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The World's End (2013)
Laurie Sparham/Focus Features
“The World’s End” is the third part in a loose trilogy of films directed by Edgar Wright, which started with “Shaun of the Dead” and continued with “Hot Fuzz.” This new film is a sort-of sequel to “Shaun of the Dead,” both for the characters, who are taking refuge in a pub from hordes of zombie-like people, and for the filmmakers, representing a homecoming for the director after “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” and for stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost after “Paul.” The characters in “The World’s End” are older and more world-weary, though, with the disappointments and missed opportunities of their lives pressing on their minds as they approach middle age.
Continue reading “Rovers Return” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Centro histórico (2012)
International Film Festival Rotterdam
"I have been involved in this kind of thing before. It never works." Ahead of the Edinburgh screening of "Centro histórico," Pedro Costa's comment could have been about the dubious nature of portmanteau films; in this case four stories set in the Portuguese city of Guimarães by Aki Kaurismäki, Mr. Costa, Victor Erice and Manoel de Oliveira. Afterward, and filtered through an idiosyncratic Q. & A. with the director, it could just as easily have been a sign of Mr. Costa's professed wish to keep faith with an uncompromisingly political cinema and reach audiences who may not be receptive to his methods. Either way, it surely echoed the sentiments of the film's backers, who having commissioned it to promote the city's status as a 2012 European Capital of Culture and received a work deemed unreleasable, have now cast it onto the waters of the world's film festivals while hoping for the best.
Continue reading “Take It to the Streets” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Conjuring (2013)
Michael Tackett/Warner Brothers Pictures
To say that things go bump in the night in "The Conjuring" does an injustice to the volume of the film's audio mix, which has been calibrated to loosen your dental fillings. And to say that there isn't an unpredictable second in the film doesn't make it sound as much fun as it actually is, given the lengths that director James Wan goes to in keeping this particular haunted-house caper barreling forwards. Downplaying the Sam Raimi-flavor pastiche that tends to gum up this kind of exercise — at least until the end — it's a straightforward piece of mostly gore-lite atmospheric scaremongering, in which several fine actors make one another jump out of their skins while a punch-up breaks out in the orchestra.
Continue reading “Rhode Island Dead” »
MOVIE REVIEW
You’re Next (2013)
Corey Ransberg/Lionsgate
You would be forgiven for thinking that Adam Wingard’s low-budget slasher horror was another straight out of the mold, paint-by-number copycat, but you would be so very wrong.
In all honesty, the first 10 minutes do nothing to allay the fear that you’re going to have to sit through another cheap and tactless John Carpenter rip-off. You’ve seen all this before: a masked killer, a half-naked teenager, a brutal murder. However, it soon becomes apparent that you’re dealing with a different kind of beast once the dysfunctional family, about to be accosted by said masked killers, assembles in the nearby house (or rather, mansion) for a long-overdue reunion. Then the bickering begins — particularly the long-standing browbeating that son Crispian (played in wonderfully understated fashion by A. J. Bowen) receives from his smug brother Drake (Joe Swanberg, landing some of the most delicious lines). Drake is the character you love to hate, and is a clue to where this very black comedy is heading.
Continue reading “Broken Home Invasion” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Red 2 (2013)
Jan Thijs/Summit Entertainment
In “Red 2,” Bruce Willis’s retired C.I.A. operative Frank Moses and his former unwitting hostage/ward, Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), very briefly enjoy their domestic bliss shopping at Costco before Marvin (John Malkovich) suddenly emerges from the next aisle urging them to join him. A Cold War-era document concerning a missing nuclear weapon has surfaced online (opportunity to name-drop WikiLeaks/Reddit/2chan missed), implicating Frank and Marvin by name. Just about every major power’s intelligence agency, infiltrated by its own bloodthirsty warmonger, wants to capture the two in order to secure the weapon of mass destruction and serve its particular agenda. And Frank’s friend (Helen Mirren), foe (Lee Byung-hun) and old flame (Catherine Zeta-Jones) have each enlisted to be hot on his trail.
Continue reading “Stop Worrying and Love the Gun” »