MOVIE REVIEW
Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (2011)
David James/Paramount Pictures
You’ll be glad that “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” isn’t in 3-D, especially if you suffer from acrophobia. As you might recall, Tom Cruise made headlines a year ago dangling from the tallest building in the world — Dubai’s Burj Khalifa — some 1,700 feet above ground. You’re going to feel every dizzying inch as the camera slowly pans above his head to reveal the ground beneath when he begins climbing outside a window on the 109th floor and scaling up to the 130th. Mr. Cruise probably deserves an Oscar and then some just for pulling off this stunt. It’s truly difficult to imagine anyone not clutching his or her armrests for dear life during this vertigo-inducing scene.
Continue reading “This Genre Will Self-Improve in Five Seconds” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011)
Memento Films
In the beginning, “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” seems to signal a major departure for Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan. With its lush, warm colors and timeless fable-like quality, the film is at first glance nothing like Mr. Ceylan’s meditations on urban alienation. In a long shot, golden headlight beams sweep through the darkness and ignite the Anatolian steppe like comets in the night sky. A caravan of cars wriggles across the hilly countryside amid stops that are virtually indistinguishable from each other as if in an Abbas Kiarostami movie, carrying cops, a prosecutor, a doctor, a few gendarmes, some gravediggers and a pair of murder suspects searching in vain for a corpse. They argue, wax poetic and bond in the course of the twilight-zone journey. But once they unearth the body, it finally becomes apparent that Mr. Ceylan is treading familiar territory after all.
Continue reading “The Wind Will Tarry Us” »
MOVIE REVIEW
House at the End of the Street (2012)
Relativity Media
Jennifer Lawrence has wasted no time parlaying her Oscar nod from indie darling “Winter’s Bone” to land roles in Hollywood blockbusters like “X-Men: First Class” and “The Hunger Games.” But striking while the iron is hot hasn’t boded well for the careers of many an actress with similar prospects. Like, what’s Elisabeth Shue been up to lately? Oh, she’s been in “Piranha 3D” and some teen horror flick called “House at the End of the Street,” which also stars … none other than Ms. Lawrence! We are happy to report, though, that this isn’t some sort of karmic and prophetic cautionary tale about the Oscar curse, because “House at the End of the Street” actually turns out to be kind of decent.
Continue reading “The Psycho of Abuse” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Lady (2011)
Magali Bragard/Cohen Media Group
"The Lady," directed by Luc Besson, is a biographical melodrama set against the last 30 years of tumult in Myanmar. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, here played by Michelle Yeoh, is the lady in question: the daughter of assassinated Myanmar revolutionary, Gen. Aung San. Buoyed by her British husband and thousands of supporters, she endured years of house arrest and intimidation by the military junta and in turn became a leader in the ongoing fight for democracy.
From a Westerner's perspective, the film is a fascinating look at an oppressive dictatorship and the woman who stood in its way, although it never quite escapes the trappings of a typical Hollywood-style biopic, replete with clunky acting and an overly aggressive musical score. Perhaps Mr. Besson would disagree, but audiences are sophisticated enough to appreciate the gravity of a massacre or the wistfulness of returning home without grand, sweeping music at every cue. "The Lady" is at its best when it does away with the bells and whistles and focuses on the story itself.
Continue reading “Woman of Destiny” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Alps (2011)
Yorgos Lanthimos
A young girl practices gymnastics under the tutelage of a near-psychotic coach. Another studiously memorizes lists of light fittings. And they are part of a bizarre group whose leader assigns each member code names based on the Swiss Alps. From these mysterious beginnings, the audience is required to unpick exactly what this eccentric gang of four is up to and why. The resulting puzzle is similar in tone to director Yorgos Lanthimos’s unforgettable debut, “Dogtooth,” but this time we’re following several different characters in their respective stories and the dots are more difficult to join for a while.
Continue reading “Climb Down Ev’ry Mountain” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Act of Valor (2012)
Relativity Media
Just when you’re safe from the onslaught of torture porn, Hollywood has a new form of sensory assault: military porn. No, we’re not talking about Dirk Yates (googling him would be NSFW). “Act of Valor” is a new drama that proudly boasts a cast of active-duty Navy Seals. Their wooden acting and monotonous line delivery are comparable to those of porn stars. But the dramatic scenes are few and far between amid the “action” sequences, if you catch our drift. So, no, we’re not being facetious for calling the film military porn.
Continue reading “It Pays to Be a Spinner” »
TELEVISION REVIEW | 'SUPERHEROES'
HBO
In a perverse sort of sense, documentarians play a very similar role to that of an investigative journalist. They sense a story, pursue it endlessly, albeit with the permission of their subject and eventually bring that unreported story to the masses. It’s an important vocation imbued with passion and dedication; and yet while the aim of the documentarian is invariably didactic, his or her work is more often than not rip-roaringly entertaining.
Mike Barnett’s “Superheroes” is a fascinating example of a genre pic that manages to effortlessly suffuse entertainment with unbridled insight into a little known subject: that of the real-life superhero.
Continue reading “A Justice League of Their Own” »
MOVIE REVIEW
We Bought a Zoo (2011)
Neal Preston/20th Century Fox
With “We Bought a Zoo,” Cameron Crowe has more or less remade “Jerry Maguire” with cuddly wuddly animals in place of memorable one-liners. The new film is about that same foolhardy idealism that drives a man to stake everything he has.
Although based on a true story, the film has inexplicably transported the Dartmoor Zoological Park from the county of Devon in southwest England to southern California. After his son Dylan (Colin Ford) is expelled from school for various antisocial transgressions, widower Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) decides it’s time for a change of scenery. So he quits his job at the Los Angeles Times and squanders an inheritance on a decrepit countryside zoo. While Mr. Crowe and co-writer Aline Brosh McKenna have preserved many details in the trans-Atlantic migration, they are seemingly oblivious to the fact that real-life Mr. Mee’s former employer, the Guardian, has just launched an American edition.
Continue reading “Show Me the Monkey” »
Courtesy photo
John Kricfalusi has staked out some idiosyncratic ground in his three decades as a working animator; and it doesn't take long to recognize his work when you see it. “The Ren & Stimpy Show” caused visible distress to Nickelodeon in the 1990s, and lingers in the memory of anyone who caught its U.K. airings on BBC Two. Before then, Mr. Kricfalusi had already worked uncomfortably for Filmation and Hanna-Barbera, and found a much more agreeable niche alongside legendary animator Ralph Bakshi. More recently, the man usually known just as John K. has directed music videos, animated the opening couch gag for an episode of “The Simpsons,” and continued to get into occasional trouble with broadcasters.
Mr. Kricfalusi came to the Encounters International Film Festival in Bristol to talk about some of his favorite animated films. We took the opportunity to ask him about the joys of old animation, why the Internet is frustratingly slow and his very dim view of motion-capture.
Continue reading “Good Old-Fashioned Happy and Joy” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Hugo (2011)
Jaap Buitendijk/Paramount Pictures
One would expect any hardcore Scorsese fan to greet “Hugo” with some measure of trepidation: Has Martin Scorsese finally lost it? Could this PG-rated 3-D fantasy-adventure in fact be his equivalent of Francis Ford Coppola’s Robin Williams-Jennifer Lopez flick, “Jack”? Happily, such is not the case. In essence, “Hugo” the family-friendly extravaganza is only a pretext for Mr. Scorsese’s big-budget love letter to Georges Méliès and for his propaganda film championing moving-image archiving and preservation. You can pretty much tell the auteur was sleepwalking through all the C.G.I.-laden set pieces. But when the movie ventures into his passion-project territories, it comes more alive than any 3-D gimmickry.
Continue reading “The Ageless Innocence” »