MOVIE REVIEW
The Guard (2011)
Sony Pictures Classics
“The Guard” is that rare breed of crime story that involves a passive protagonist, à la “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” It’s not that the protagonist in “The Guard,” Brendan Gleeson’s Sgt. Boyle, apathetically takes a backseat as events unfold. He is simply more occupied with cracking wise, cavorting with prostitutes and tending to his dying mother than actually solving the case at hand. It is quite an achievement, then, that writer-director John Michael McDonagh manages to calculatingly frustrate and engage viewers simultaneously through the duration of the film.
Continue reading “The Crime-Fighting Irish” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Trip (2011)
Phil Fisk/IFC Films
One can never accuse Michael Winterbottom of making the same film twice, but “The Trip” comes pretty darn close. To be fair, the project is a six-episode BBC Two series edited down to feature length, but here you have Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon again as themselves à la “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.” The premise involves Mr. Coogan embarking on a cross-country journey to sample a few eclectic restaurants, and Mr. Brydon tagging along after Mr. Coogan’s American girlfriend drops out. Although fashioned after “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” what transpires instead is a British “Sideways” or “Old Joy” that substitutes celebrity impersonations for midlife crises — and not with stellar results.
Continue reading “Out in the Sticks, a Bish-Bash-Bosh Journey” »
MOVIE REVIEW
13 Assassins (2010)
Magnet Releasing
Takashi Miike has more than cemented his reputation as the sickest filmmaker known to man. Fans gush (and hurl) endlessly over each and every Miike defilement of all that is sacred, but rare is the mention of his fairly conventional and humble beginnings as Shohei Imamura’s assistant director. We actually got a sneak peek of his classical sensibility in “Audition” of all things, up to the point when the movie finally breached the boundaries of decency and earned cinematic infamy. His new film “13 Assassins,” though, is that true classical jidaigeki feudal epic that those who have seen “Audition” know he has in him. And Mr. Miike executes (pardon the pun) it so beautifully that it’s breathtaking.
Continue reading “In Feudal Japan, Rounding Up an Ocean’s 13” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)
2011 Tribeca Film Festival
It’s a good thing that Tsui Hark has never jumped on the “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” bandwagon. Although to be fair, he probably didn’t see any point in impressing audiences outside Hong Kong after his pair of underwhelming Hollywood one-two punch Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicles, “Knock Off” and “Double Team.” Poor Mr. Tsui. Even Mr. Van Damme has since redeemed himself with “JCVD” (which incidentally features a character who is an obnoxious hot-shot Hong Kong filmmaker, presumably based on you-know-who). Will Hollywood learn to forgive?
Continue reading “Kung Fu Hustler” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Confessions (2010)
Japan Society
“Confessions,” the official Japanese entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category for this year’s Oscars, made the shortlist of nine but fell short of a nomination. Curiously, the film has much in common with the eventual victor, Denmark’s “In a Better World.” Each tackles the subjects of revenge and vigilantism through the delinquency of a fair-haired juvenile mastermind and his social-misfit accomplice. But whereas “In a Better World” offers a cop-out ending with no actual harm done, “Confessions” serves up shattering collateral damage far and wide.
Continue reading “Crucified on a Cross, Not Pitied” »
MOVIE REVIEW
My Piece of the Pie (2011)
Chantal Thomine-Desmazures/Studiocanal
With “My Piece of the Pie,” Cédric Klapisch seems to want to strike a happy medium between the hyperkinetic, post-E.U. “L’auberge espagnole” and the mature and hence snoozy “Paris.” The result recalls lighter Robert Guédiguian fare (think “Marius and Jeannette”), which entertains without offering anything of substance on its blue-collar protagonist disenfranchised by the global recession.
Continue reading “When the Job’s Away” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Incendies (2010)
EOne Films
Nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category, Denis Villeneuve’s “Incendies” uses Middle East unrest as a framework for classic Greek tragedy. What transpires is a brutal and compelling meditation on war, survival and reconciliation, even when its core Sophoclean aspect starts reaching really far into daytime soap territory.
Continue reading “Unearthing a Secret Carried to the Grave” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Stake Land (2011)
IFC Midnight
Wrapped up somewhere within vampire apocalypse road movie "Stake Land" are two or three inspired touches. It's incredibly frustrating, then, that these are buried underneath an amalgam of earnestness and unoriginality. So derivative is Jim Mickle's third feature that at times it feels as if he and co-writer Nick Damici watched "The Road" and "28 Days Later" and simply decided to replace the cannibals and zombies with vampires.
Continue reading “The Blood of the Nocturnal Covenant” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Conspirator (2011)
Claudette Barius/Roadside Attractions
Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator” suffers from some of the the same wooden, point-and-shoot didactic dramatics that characterized the Academy Award winner’s “Lions for Lambs.” Yet it offers a valuable look at an iconic historical event from a never-before-seen perspective, molded to an evocative portrait of high-society Washington D.C. on edge in the wake of the Lincoln assassination.
Continue reading “The Lincoln Lawyering” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Scream 4 (2011)
Gemma La Mana/Dimension Films
In reviving the “Scream” franchise some 11 years after its second sequel, director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson have improbably found the way to territory that’s even more meta than before. The self-aware characters in the first three films always seemed to know they were pawns in a horror-movie game. In “Scream 4,” the protagonists must grapple with the genre’s rules and those of the franchise reboot, as a new generation’s revival of the Ghostface killer parallels the filmmakers’ resuscitation of this late-’90s cinematic icon.
All the self-reflexivity and layered mirror effects make for an experience that’s of a fun and lighthearted tongue-in-cheek variety, with some notably clever wink-wink twists. In the 15 years since the first film’s release, however, Messrs. Craven and Williamson have forgotten that beneath the dense, fourth-wall-shattering aesthetic of that groundbreaking initial effort was a genuinely scary slasher flick.
Continue reading “Taking Another Stab at Meta-Horror” »