MOVIE REVIEW
Winter's Bone (2010)
Sebastian Mlynarski/Roadside Attractions
Deep in the Ozarks, where it seems betrayal of your neighbor is the worst crime of all and most justice is natural justice, teenager Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) needs to find her missing father before her family and two young siblings are evicted from their home. Determined to discover what's happened to him, Ree starts asking pointed questions of her in-laws and won't take no for an answer.
MOVIE REVIEW
The Ghost Writer/The Ghost (2010)
Guy Ferrandis/Summit Entertainment
Political thriller and political reality occupy the same space in "The Ghost Writer" (a k a "The Ghost" in Britain), as Pierce Brosnan's timely portrayal of a British prime minister in exile falls in sync with Roman Polanski's acutely tangled circumstances. Covered in Mr. Polanski's fingerprints, the film lets the director get stuck into his regular theme of small groups stuck in chilly isolation, and stirs in black satire about a misunderstood world figure looking simultaneously noble and a complete dope.
MOVIE REVIEW
The Milk of Sorrow (2009)
Olive Films
It is a peculiarity of the Academy Awards that a film's nationality often eclipses its filmmaker in the Best Foreign Language Film category. So it was not director Claudia Llosa who was named when "The Milk of Sorrow" was the dark-horse entry in last year's Oscar. Instead, that honor went to Peru. For some films, this would be less appropriate.
The movie begins with a black screen and the voice of an old woman singing about a rape. This is Perpetua (Bárbara Lazón), whose death forces her daughter Fausta (Magaly Solier) to reassess how she copes with her world. Fausta was born in the middle of Peru's recent terrorist uprising/civil war, and suffers from what is casually referred to as the "tit illness" — the pain and suffering her mother experienced before her birth transmitted to her via breast milk, and translated more metaphorically for the title.
MOVIE REVIEW
Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)
2010 Sundance Film Festival
“Exit Through the Gift Shop” arrives in theaters propelled by an avalanche of critical plaudits. British street artist/filmmaker Banksy has been hailed as a cinematic revolutionary, the creator of a self-reflexive masterpiece that gets at the essence of the precarious divide between the artist and the hack, the observer and the observed.
MOVIE REVIEW
The Secret of Kells (2009)
GKIDS
“The Secret of Kells” shocked the punditry and just about everyone else when it earned a 2009 Best Animated Feature Oscar nomination alongside “Up,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and other better-known counterparts. Yet, this small, independent, hand-drawn film from co-directors Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey might be the most evocative movie of the bunch, a picture that relies on a potpourri of cubist and impressionistic sensibilities to tell a standard coming-of-age story in a way it’s not been told before.
MOVIE REVIEW
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009)
Screen Media Films
You’re sure to recognize Pippa Lee (Robin Wright Penn). She’s a pretty, devoted housewife, a regular at the stores near her Connecticut home. Her passivity — her devotion to the blandest of routines — blends her inextricably to her surroundings. They seem to have shaped every contour of her life; whoever she once was and wherever she came from buried beneath a sort of high-class suburban malaise.
MOVIE REVIEW
Mammoth (2009)
Memfis Film/P.A. Jörgensen/IFC Films
“Mammoth," the English-language debut of Lukas Moodyson (“Lilya 4-Ever”) takes itself very, very seriously. Were the ponderous visuals, mannered atmosphere and overwrought soundtrack not enough evidence of that fact, the endless stream of scenes featuring actors dramatically expressing their characters’ inner turmoil confirms it. It’s one of those international compendiums with various storylines centered on the same weighty themes, which mean to say so much about the human condition and modernity that they end up saying perilously little.
MOVIE REVIEW
The Yes Men Fix the World (2009)
Shadow Distribution
In 2003’s “The Yes Men,” Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum set up a Web site mimicking and lampooning the World Trade Organization, an international organization they oppose. Their Web site, though, was mistaken for the real thing, and they were invited to speak at important meetings and functions as representatives for W.T.O. They decided to use the opportunity to hold a mirror up and show the outfit its own greed and hopefully make a difference. Now, with “The Yes Men Fix the World,” a sequel of sorts, they have gotten much better at getting people to think they represent companies that they satirize.
Continue reading “Jokesters Practically Approach Political Agenda” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Exploding Girl (2009)
Carolyn Drake/
The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival
Bradley Rust Gray’s latest collaboration with wife So Yong Kim is an intimate and quirky (albeit incredibly lightweight) portrayal of a developing relationship that lends credence to the adage that sometimes what’s left unsaid is more important than what actually is.
MOVIE REVIEW
An Education (2009)
Kerry Brown/Sony Pictures Classics
The tenderness of Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig’s “An Education” is positively overpowering, to a degree that even underage-cavorting is easy to forgive — thematically, of course. For her 17th birthday, wise-beyond-her-years schoolgirl Jenny (played magnificently by newcomer Carey Mulligan) is taken to Paris by the much older David (Peter Saarsgard at his best). Full of worldly charm and sophistication, David represents all that Jenny strives for. Thus, resisting his persistent courtship is all the more difficult. In Paris, she succumbs to his gentleman's flirtation, and the scene — set in a small yet plush hotel room — is sublime. So sweet, that when the narrative butterflies cease to fly and reality sets in, the sight of what’s essentially uncomfortable cradle-rocking achieves the desirability of an enviable romance. By this point into the film, the simplistic beauty of “An Education” has reached the point of no return. An irresistible one-way ticket, it is.
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