MOVIE REVIEW
The Stoning of Soraya M. (2009)
MPower Pictures
A simple purpose underlies “The Stoning of Soraya M.,” fulfilled without distractions by director Cyrus Nowrasteh. Based on the 1994 novel by Freidoune Sahebjam, it’s a streamlined, real-time depiction of the true event promised by the title: the brutal communal stoning of a woman that took place in newly post-revolutionary Iran. A fervent outcry against the abuses subjected on women not only in Iran – with which we’ve all become familiar during the past two weeks – but throughout much of the world, it successfully provokes feelings of uncontrollable outrage.
Continue reading “Let He Who is With Sin Cast the First Stone” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Quiet Chaos (2008)
Chico De Luigi/IFC Films
Sandro Veronesi’s bestseller about a widower coming to terms with the accidental death of his wife serves as the basis for Antonello Grimaldi’s eponymous “Quiet Chaos.” But with Nanni Moretti scripting and starring, the film inevitably seems like an afterthought inspired by “The Son’s Room,” Mr. Moretti’s own much-lauded take on the grief process. The two films share thematic threads, but Mr. Grimaldi has extended every strand by a mile, including the tangential ones. Some manifestations of the mourning presented in “Quiet Chaos” do register as observant, while others strike as way off topic.
Continue reading “Good Grief Hunting” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Surveillance (2008)
Magnet Releasing
To say that Jennifer Lynch’s “Surveillance” is a chip off the old Lynchian block is alternately misleading and accurate. Whereas the films orchestrated by her auteur father, David, disturb by turning the viewer’s brain into a battered punching bag, “Surveillance” achieves a similar feeling of psychological unease in a much more coherent manner. The film is a deviant surprise, an unwavering hell ride from the mind of a once left-for-dead filmmaker. After the critical drubbing and box-office tanking of her 1993 debut, “Boxing Helena,” Ms. Lynch hadn’t exactly put her name on the list of tomorrow’s best filmmakers. In fact, her name had become somewhat of an afterthought, one of the many examples of unsuccessful nepotism. “Surveillance’s” paralyzing tone and controlled ultra-violence, however, show that Ms. Lynch has emerged from Hollywood’s time-out corner with a vengeance.
Continue reading “Uncovering Clues on the Lost Highway” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Paramount Pictures
Movies do not get more painstakingly idiotic than “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” – an orgy of clanging metal, propagandistic wide shots, short declarative sentences passing for dialogue and uncontrolled camera pans. Where Michael Bay’s first crack at the “Transformers” franchise – though itself a dubious venture – managed to evoke a sort of silly, slapdash spirit, the sequel quickly collapses into unmitigated big-budget tedium, all dressed up with nowhere to go. It indulges all of its maker’s worst instincts, without demonstrating any of the muscular storytelling that’s become his true specialty.
Continue reading “More Than Sores the Eye, Robots in Disgrace” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Disappeared (2009)
Lost Tribe Productions
Johnny Kevorkian’s debut feature is an eerie cross-genre thriller-horror that is sadly let down by its muddled final act. The puzzling denouement is a genuine shame, as for the first hour, Mr. Kevorkian delivers a gritty and intelligent study of the themes of loss and isolation. Matthew (a hugely impressive Harry Treadaway) returns home having been in psychiatric care following the disappearance of his younger brother Tom, and frictions soon arise between him and his father Jake (Greg Wise) as old wounds resurface and the blame game begins. As Matthew digs up the past after hearing Tom’s ghostly voice on a video tape of a police appeal, his world soon begins to unravel.
Continue reading “Keeper of Phantom Brother” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Hurt Locker (2008)
Summit Entertainment
"The Hurt Locker" lays its cards on the table with the opening words: "War is a drug." Anyone at odds with that thought will have a tough time at Kathryn Bigelow's film, which gives the notion a good chewing over. Action movies can be a drug too, and luckily for addicts of the hard stuff, Ms. Bigelow finds in the dust of Baghdad a further evolution of her interest in blue-collar obsessives and the macho mindset, and the results are pretty combustible.
Continue reading “Caught Between Iraq and a Hard Place” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Windmill Movie (2009)
The Film Desk
To most people Richard P. Rogers probably seemed like a lucky man. Born of the privilege of life on the Upper East Side and the Hamptons, he reached the upper echelon of academics in his professorship at Harvard, thrived as a documentarian and experimental filmmaker, and was graced with three decades of love from the same woman. Yet, as Alexander Olch’s “The Windmill Movie” reveals, a dark and conflicted soul brewed beneath that idealized exterior.
Continue reading “Life Through a Lens” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Dead Snow (2009)
Sveinung Svendsen/Euforia Film
With an ingenious premise that needs only two words ("Nazi zombies") of sales-pitching, "Dead Snow" is a film that benefits from a small level of expectation. Deliver an excess of flesheaters clad in SS uniforms ripping limbs and chomping on innards, and audiences will applaud. Fortunately, for any moviegoer hooked in by the film's paper-thin arch, Norwegian director and co-writer Tommy Wirkola does just that by simply frowning upon the old adage, "less is more." A free-wheeling, anything-goes homage to America's glory days of blood-soaked camp, "Dead Snow" never takes itself seriously, piling on one grossout gag after another, all streamlined with a consistent tone of corpse-skin-dark humor. The end result doesn't quite reinvent horror's zombie subgenre, but it's still one hell of an entertaining ride despite its flaws.
Continue reading “Return of the Hitler-Loving Dead” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Year One (2009)
Suzanne Hanover/Columbia Pictures
“Year One” is precisely the sort of clunky high-concept comedy that’s become the norm for Harold Ramis. It’s a collection of throwaway gags in search of a narrative and some characters, made more in the tradition of “Bedazzled” than “Groundhog Day.” Lots of talented people slum their way through halfhearted comic situations that usually devolve into fart jokes, gay jokes or biblical puns.
Continue reading “Have a Gay Old Time” »
MOVIE REVIEW
$9.99 (2009)
Regent Releasing
Some of the best animated films are the ones in which the story could not be told any other way. Perhaps you need a flying house held aloft by balloons as in "Up," or you are attempting to re-create spotty memories of a traumatic past as in "Waltz with Bashir." Either way, for whatever reason, live action just won't do. An Israeli-Australian stop-motion film directed by Tatia Rosenthal, "$9.99" joins the ranks of well-written and beautifully-rendered modern animated films, but it ultimately lacks that essential relationship between form and function achieved by the best.
Continue reading “And of Clay Are We Created” »