MOVIE REVIEW
Trance (2013)
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Danny Boyle's new film circles back over some of the same territory he claimed nearly two decades ago, when his first movies dug under the skin of Britain and found that aspiration was the root of most evil while small-time crooks lived by their wits even when they had none. But in "Trance" things have changed, in every department. The criminals are now sharply suited slimeballs living in palatial splendor – bankers in all but occupation – while Mr. Boyle's film making has been ramped up for the occasion into a high style, a blazing sugar rush of digital camera work, Dutch angles and interior neon. And the director himself has been through an Olympian transformation, a wonderfully unexpected chain of events leaving the man who made "Trainspotting" installed as his country's national treasure on a tide of goodwill, Morale-Booster General by royal appointment.
In truth, "Trance" feels like the work of a man affected by his exertions elsewhere. The storyline is a tricksy, squirming nest of vipers, involving James McAvoy as a man with amnesia who can't remember where he hid a stolen painting, and Vincent Cassel as the nasty London criminal who badly wants him to remember. The criminal sets the amnesiac up with Rosario Dawson's hypnotist to try and unblock Mr. McAvoy's pipes, and after that the twists pile up. Mr. Boyle has dropped the name of Nicolas Roeg in connection with "Trance's" interlocked flashbacks and contradictory points of view; but really what we have here is just a serious case of unreliable narrators, a much less bitter pill than Mr. Roeg's medicine.
Continue reading “The Mentalists” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Evil Dead (2013)
TriStar Pictures
Sam Raimi’s 1981 picture, “The Evil Dead,” is rightly regarded as a classic of the horror genre: a pitch-perfect, no-budget thrill ride suffused with terror yet tinged with knowing humor. Fede Alvarez’s “Evil Dead” is less a remake or sequel and more of homage to Mr. Raimi’s pioneering spirit and in fact to horror as a whole. Given the nature of this beast, it is wholly derivative; yet the fact that it still delivers what feels like a fresh take on a genre that has veered toward either torture or the paranormal in recent years is welcome and — in these meta, post-“The Cabin in the Woods” times — that is an impressive feat in itself.
Continue reading “Circle of Hellish Friends” »
MOVIE REVIEW
As Luck Would Have It (2013)
Sundance Selects
With the participation of Salma Hayek, one would hope that “As Luck Would Have It” could finally help launch Álex de la Iglesia from relative obscure cultdom to the international acclaim enjoyed by fellow zany Spanish melodramatist, Pedro Almodóvar. After all, Mr. de la Iglesia has delivered over the years an oeuver that includes such pure lunacy as “The Last Circus,” a Franco-era allegory involving murderous circus clowns; “El crimen perfecto,” about a lothario marrying a homely and crazy woman after she witnessed him accidentally killing a man and blackmailed him; and “The Day of the Beast,” in which a basque priest attempts to stop the birth of the Antichrist.
Continue reading “Jobless Adman Makes a Fever Pitch” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Sleepless Night (2012)
Ricardo Vaz Palma/Tribeca Film Festival
A very literal marathon committed to film, “Sleepless Night” takes the well-worn cat-and-mouse chase to a pace not seen since perhaps “Run Lola Run.” Frédéric Jardin’s French thriller opens with a drug heist involving two cops gone very wrong. Whether they are crooked or in fact undercover is anyone’s guess. To ensure the speedy return of the plunder and thus smoothly clinch a massive drug deal, local mob boss Marciano (Serge Riaboukine) kidnaps police officer Vincent’s (Tomer Sisley) son, Thomas (Samy Seghir). Meanwhile Vincent’s own colleagues are also trailing him, and further complicate the matter by relocating the contraband from where Vincent originally stashed it.
Continue reading “Way Past Midnight in Paris” »
MOVIE REVIEW
To the Wonder (2013)
Mary Cybulski/Studiocanal
Robert Delaunay described painting as being "by nature a luminous language," and "To the Wonder" continues Terrence Malick's earnest progress toward a similarly lustrous alphabet with which to communicate with a filmgoing audience. The film takes the approach tried in "The Tree of Life" and shifts to the next logical notch, leaving vocal narrative even further behind in the rearview mirror and dealing instead in poetic epigrams delivered as whispered voice-over, and magic-hour sunbeams dappling shores and fields and wildlife; all as a means to tell an ostensibly conventional real-world drama of romantic strife. Whether this actually accords with the nature of the medium in question or goes against the grain is a divisive question. Your answer will probably determine if the response to the film is to be rapture or rampage, or both.
Continue reading “Lux Exterior” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Jonathan Olley/Columbia Pictures
Kathryn Bigelow has defended "Zero Dark Thirty" with the carefully turned phrase "depiction is not endorsement." As a noted practitioner of other arts in addition to filmmaking, as well as the small matter of being a ferociously willful director with nerves of steel, Ms. Bigelow is no doubt well aware that depiction in fact provides the most significant endorsement any art can provide: an endorsement for the viewer to think, rather than to vegetate; to see rather than unsee. At the very least the film throws new light back onto "The Hurt Locker," where she and writer Mark Boal can now be sensed kindling behind the camera, unfinished business on their minds about how the residents of Camp Victory came to move in.
Continue reading “Casus belli” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Life of Pi (2012)
20th Century Fox
Hello! My name is Richard Parker, and I am a Bengal tiger. You may have heard of me, as I am the star of a new 3-D movie called “Life of Pi,” in cinemas now. The director, Ang Lee, has chosen not to feature my name on the advertising posters, although my face features prominently. It is time for me to speak up and tell you my side of the story.
Continue reading “Through the Eye of the Tiger” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
James Fisher/Warner Brothers Pictures
No one will ever know what visual delights auteur and cinematic genius Guillermo del Toro would have conjured up for Middle Earth; but in the hands of Peter Jackson and his team, everything seems comfortable and familiar, or is it?
This is definitely Middle Earth, but a more innocent and happy place than seen in “The Lord of the Rings.” Four hundred years of peace have made the colors brighter, the world is greener, the skies bluer. Even Lord Elrond (Hugo Weaving) is more jovial than ever before. This is a different world. Sauron (Benedict Cumberbatch as Necromancer, replacing Sala Baker) is still in his deepest slumber; and although evil is stirring, a shadow moves to the East, no-one has anything to fear. This is not “The Lord of the Rings.”
Continue reading “A Familiar Ring” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Post Tenebras Lux (2012)
56th BFI London Film Festival
Terrence Malick has a lot to answer for. Carlos Reygadas has apparently been the first — although certainly not the last — director to watch “The Tree of Life” and say, “Hey! I also have a biographical story which can make a vague point of the interconnectedness of the world we live in!”
For the first 15 minutes or so of “Post Tenebras Lux,” this is an excellent idea. A toddler makes her way through a muddy field, alone except for some cows and dogs, as night falls and an incredible thunderstorm rolls in. The little girl in her bright coat — with the sky and lightning flashes reflected in the puddles beneath her feet — is as striking as anything world cinema has seen for some time. But this astonishing opening sequence presages two things: an uncomfortable mix of fiction and reality and a disconcerting blend of image and substance.
Continue reading “An Impressionist Family Portrait” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Great Expectations (2012)
Johan Persson/56th BFI London Film Festival
Charles Dickens’s novel has been required reading for years, with varying levels of success. Modern 14-year-olds often struggle with the flowery Victorian language and find it difficult to see the very current emotions underneath. Many children will seize upon this movie gratefully. In that sense this new adaptation is a tremendous success. In very many other ways, this is a story that has been told before.
Continue reading “All’s Fair in Love and Class War” »