MOVIE REVIEW
Shadow Dancer (2012)
Rob Hardy/Sundance Film Festival 2012
In the growing portfolio of BBC Films — whose output is not to be sniffed at — "Shadow Dancer" sits comfortably in the same section as siblings such as "Page Eight." It's another polished, festival-friendly film that can easily fit into a second life on television without scraping the sides. It features a fine inwardly directed performance from Andrea Riseborough as a troubled I.R.A. informant in 1990s Belfast, a setting that also allows director James Marsh to return to perhaps the most highly charged example available of the environment he loves to film: insular British terraces of secrets and lies, crime and punishment, friends and enemies. The only thing missing is any actual cinematic impact.
Continue reading “Troubles in Mind” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Coriolanus (2011)
Larry D. Horricks/The Weinstein Company
You can tell a lot about an actor by the vanity projects he or she undertakes, by which we mean the films an actor self-finances once he or she has made it big in Hollywood. Some actors choose to take small parts in defiant anti-blockbusters, such as when Ewan McGregor followed “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace” with “Young Adam,” about a raping, stealing, murdering canal-boat worker in 1950s Glasgow. Other times an actor will take his money to direct something, such as when Samantha Morton used the clout of her Oscar nominations to direct “The Unloved,” about a girl abandoned to the British foster-care system.
So whatever Ralph Fiennes decided to use his Voldemort paychecks for would be interesting. He’s brought one of Shakespeare’s earliest and weakest plays to the screen, set it in a modern, unnamed Eastern bloc country (filmed in Serbia with a mainly Serbian crew) and showed someone shot in the head within the first five minutes. “Coriolanus” does not feel like the work of a first-time director. Mr. Fiennes pulls it off triumphantly. He’s made a historical curiosity relevant now, when our cities are in uproar and the citizens have taken to the streets.
Continue reading “A Very Top Dog to the Commonalty” »
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
The Devil's Double (2011)
Sofie Van Mieghem/Lionsgate
"House of Saddam," a 2008 BBC-HBO production, was a brilliantly observed insight into the sordid brutality of Saddam Hussein's reign as leader of the Baath party. One of its greatest successes lay in Philip Arditti's masterful portrayal of Saddam's eldest son, the maniacal Uday Hussein, a man whose lustful, violent nature would put most Roman emperors to shame. Lee Tamahori's "The Devil's Double" delves deeper into the mythos of Uday (Dominic Cooper), utilizing the memoirs of Latif Yahia (also played by Mr. Cooper) — Uday's former classmate who was forced to become his fiday (body double) — as source material; and it certainly makes for fascinating viewing.
Continue reading “Certified Copycat” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Putty Hill (2011)
Andrew Laumann/Cinema Guild
Detroit is a city where people searching for work have abandoned whole neighborhoods. New Orleans is still in the process of rebuilding after Katrina. But it's Baltimore that has become the emblem of the problems facing America's working class. HBO's "The Wire" spent five seasons showing the nuances of the city and its war on drugs to a transfixed international audience. And now "Putty Hill," a small independent movie, shows what drugs have done to the white working-class sections of Baltimore as well.
Continue reading “In the City of Desperate Living” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Viva Riva! (2011)
Music Box Films
It’s wonderful to see a movie that knows exactly what it is doing, and looks great while doing it. It’s fantastic to see a movie completely frank about sex, money and the violence people are willing to commit in pursuit of those two things. It’s brilliant to see a movie where the script is as smart as the staging, and where the staging doesn’t just make you wonder how much it has cost. And it’s so much fun to see a movie that takes its perfect setup and perfectly delivers.
Continue reading “Do That Congo Beat” »
MOVIE REVIEW
United Red Army (2008)
Masayuki Kakegawa/Wakamatsu Production
“United Red Army” is a colossal recounting of how the 1960s student movement disintegrated from radical to extremist, with comrades in arms in the midst of a period of prolonged inaction at a remote training camp eventually giving up on daily drills to figuratively reenact “Lord of the Flies” — but with a much higher body count. The film is noteworthy because director-co-writer Koji Wakamatsu self-financed and distributed the $2.4-million production, defying a system and a culture that would rather forget uglier episodes in the nation’s history such as the Nanking Massacre.
Continue reading “Clipping the Ultra-Left Wing” »
MOVIE REVIEW
If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (2010)
Film Movement
The renaissance in Romanian cinema continues with “If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle,” a small release that kicks off the 2011 film calendar. First-time filmmaker Florin Serban’s gritty prison drama — shot on a hand-held camera largely in close-up — offers a paired-down, intense character-driven experience that propels its viewer into the suffocating world of life in juvenile detention.
Continue reading “Serving a Run-On Sentence” »
MOVIE REVIEW
True Grit (2010)
Lorey Sebastian/Paramount Pictures
In “True Grit,” the Coen brothers play it straight. The masters of caustic pastiche and razor-sharp observational cinema return to the western, but not with the tension of “Blood Simple” or the existential weirdness of “No Country for Old Men.” Instead, their adaptation of the 1968 Charles Portis novel (and not, it must be stressed, the 1969 Academy Award-winning John Wayne vehicle) is largely a return to the genre’s classical form.
Continue reading “A Woman, a Gun and Some Noodling Around” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Red Hill (2010)
Strand Releasing
You’ve seen every bit of the modern-day Australian western “Red Hill” before, but writer-director Patrick Hughes plays the notes well. From the first-day-on-the-job hook to the backward small town, the silent aborigine killer and the complexly staged shootouts, the film plants itself firmly in B-movie territory and stays there for an efficient 95 minutes.
Continue reading “No Country for a Young Cop” »