MOVIE REVIEW
Margaret (2011)
Myles Aronowitz/Fox Searchlight Pictures
Remember Kenneth Lonergan? It’s been 11 years since his art-house hit and double Oscar nominee “You Can Count on Me.” He started filming its follow-up, “Margaret,” in 2005, and it’s been mired in a legal battle until now. Unsurprisingly, the finished product is discernibly dated — from the post-9/11 debates about the Middle East in the dialogue to the late Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella in producing credits. But is it worth the wait? Absolutely.
Continue reading “Worlds of Wanwood Leafmeal Lie” »
Jack English/Studiocanal
Borrowing a page from Darren Aronofsky's book, Tomas Alfredson takes steps to ensure that the new version of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" swims with visible grain. It's a fine piece of calculated shorthand and works wonders for the ambiance. Every time Gary Oldman as George Smiley speaks from the shadows, the audience peers at him through a fog of silver halide chemistry. When Sir Alec Guinness walked this way, he also frowned through the grain but had a cast-iron excuse: It was 1979, and film grain came naturally.
Continue reading “From Chelsea With Love” »
MOVIE REVIEW
A Separation (2011)
Sydney Film Festival 2011
Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, “A Separation” is a gripping whodunit under the guise of a domestic drama. Set in a strikingly progressive Iran, the film plays out almost like a cautionary tale against Westernization. Two women’s defiance of their husbands set in motion a series of increasingly dire consequences. But unlike most thrillers, the film doesn’t rely on a cheap-shot twist to hit the audience like a ton of bricks. Writer-director Asghar Farhadi deftly foreshadows the proceedings without underestimating the moviegoers’ intelligence and sends more chills with each revelatory déjà vu.
Continue reading “Divorce Iranian Style” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Page One: Inside The New York Times (2011)
Magnolia Pictures
In all the speculation over the probable death of newsprint, at least one aspect appears to have been overlooked: How will film and television cope if that great standby character, the investigative reporter, is forced into extinction? Who will have the dogged tenacity to hit the streets in order to uncover a trail of corruption that normally goes all the way to the top? Would "All the President's Men" have been so thrilling had Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein been able to sit back and wait for the latest tweet from Deep Throat or for video footage of the Watergate break-in to be posted on YouTube?
"Page One: Inside The New York Times" does not ask this question — at least not directly — but it still offers a pretty comprehensive debate on the rapid changes occurring in the world's media. Andrew Rossi and Kate Novack took a genuine fly-on-the-wall approach to their subject by pitching up inside the Times building and letting a variety of talking heads provide the commentary. These number not just employees of the Grey Lady, but also the likes of David Remnick from The New Yorker, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia and even good old Mr. Bernstein himself.
Continue reading “Printing All the News That’s Fit” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)
Jack English/Studiocanal
Some movies generate high expectations — often through overblown marketing, sometimes by virtue of the elements that have come together to create the two hours of entertainment you have coughed up your hard-earned dollars to see. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" has ingredients that would leave even the most jaded of cinemagoers salivating: a director (Tomas Alfredson) who has already proved himself the master of understatement and the purveyor of claustrophobia-inducing tension with "Let the Right One In"; a glittering cast of British talent — Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch et al — gathered in such numbers that you would be forgiven for thinking you were at an awards ceremony already; source material of almost legendary status written by one of the greatest thriller authors of our times.
Continue reading “Secret Lip Service” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Drive (2011)
Richard Foreman Jr./FilmDistrict
In spite of its high-octane title, “Drive” is neither fast nor furious. To be precise, this movie about a Hollywood stuntman and part-time getaway-car driver has only two car chases throughout its duration. The first is followed by an excruciatingly slow and wooden soap-operatic love triangle, and the second by a sporadically gruesome noir. The film has the glossy Hollywood polish, but also the intimacy of a chamber piece — complete with a corny Eurotrashy trance score. The groupthinking hipster critical mob is probably sparing no lavish praises trying to prove street cred and manhood. We, on the other hand, will just tell it like it is.
Continue reading “The Fast and the Nefarious” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Restless (2011)
Scott Green/Sony Pictures Classics
Gus Van Sant seems to have devoted much of his filmography to rehearsing for that inevitable River Phoenix biopic. Indeed, the filmmaker has explored how young outcasts grapple with mortality from just about every angle — even the price-of-fame slant in the quasi-Kurt Cobain biopic “Last Days” — except one directly invoking Phoenix himself. Mr. Van Sant’s latest, “Restless,” continues this journeying, albeit this time in the timeworn boy-meets-terminally-ill-girl variety.
Continue reading “My Own Private Idée Fixe” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Moneyball (2011)
Melinda Sue Gordon/Columbia Pictures
Steven Soderbergh was unceremoniously fired from “Moneyball” about two years ago after revising an alleged grand slam of a screenplay from Steven Zaillian into a quasi-documentary that would devote 10 percent to interviews of real-life figures and another 10 to “reenactments of real events as remembered by the people playing themselves.” Those who read his script confirmed it was that bad, although we’d like to give Mr. Soderbergh the benefit of the doubt after seeing what he did with “Erin Brockovich.” At the very least, this biopic about Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane starring Brad Pitt could have been inspired and fun in Mr. Soderbergh’s hands. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the final score achieved by his late-inning relief, Bennett Miller.
Continue reading “Legends of the Ball” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Melancholia (2011)
Christian Geisnaes/Magnolia Pictures
The Cannes Film Festival this year bestowed on Lars von Trier the rare distinction of being persona non grata after he expressed sympathy for Adolf Hitler. While his inflammatory Nazi talk was indeed inexcusable, Mr. von Trier was probably right drawing parallels between himself and a dictator reviled by the world. But unlike Hitler, Mr. von Trier does deserve our sympathies. After being taken to task by critics for systematically subjecting female protagonists to escalating cruelty throughout the “Golden Heart” and as-yet incomplete “U.S.A.: Land of Opportunities” trilogies, Mr. von Trier purposely did a 180 with “Antichrist,” in which the woman is the tormentor. But his critics only grew more vocal.
Continue reading “The Loss of It All” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Contagion (2011)
Claudette Barius/Warner Brothers Pictures
Even though on the surface it shares the global scale of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Babel,” Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” doesn’t have the same preoccupation with the interconnectedness of the world. And while it involves a mysterious pandemic just as Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men” and Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness” did, “Contagion” doesn’t offer similar commentaries on the eclipse of humanity. What it is, is a hypochondria-inducing thriller that will likely have you keep off the handrails as you exit the theater, head straight to the nearest Duane Reade and stockpile bulk-size surgical masks, latex gloves and hand sanitizer.
Continue reading “The Early Bird Catches the Germ” »