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MOVIE REVIEW
Snowpiercer (2014)
Anyone coming to “Snowpiercer” as a fan of Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette’s graphic novels may be in for an attack of sugar rush. Bong Joon-ho‘s film — less an adaptation than a parallel-universe tribute act — strips out the dour Holocaust-haunted imagery and discursive chat of the original in favor of broad sci-fi pastiche, night-vision axe fights and Tilda Swinton‘s comedy teeth.
The result loses something in translation, but gains a few thousand watts in the caboose. Question much (or any) of the logic behind the last of humankind riding a vast train around an uninhabitable ice-bound Earth, and it crumbles in your hands. Instead the film would prefer you to grasp its grand parable, restated at regular intervals: that political revolution requires the seizing of the proverbial engine car from the gilded layabouts in first class, something Curtis (Chris Evans) and his fellow peasants from the slum carriages at the back of the train set about doing.
Continue reading “Fully Steamed Ahead” »
Jack English/Studiocanal
Borrowing a page from Darren Aronofsky's book, Tomas Alfredson takes steps to ensure that the new version of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" swims with visible grain. It's a fine piece of calculated shorthand and works wonders for the ambiance. Every time Gary Oldman as George Smiley speaks from the shadows, the audience peers at him through a fog of silver halide chemistry. When Sir Alec Guinness walked this way, he also frowned through the grain but had a cast-iron excuse: It was 1979, and film grain came naturally.
Continue reading “From Chelsea With Love” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)
Jack English/Studiocanal
Some movies generate high expectations — often through overblown marketing, sometimes by virtue of the elements that have come together to create the two hours of entertainment you have coughed up your hard-earned dollars to see. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" has ingredients that would leave even the most jaded of cinemagoers salivating: a director (Tomas Alfredson) who has already proved himself the master of understatement and the purveyor of claustrophobia-inducing tension with "Let the Right One In"; a glittering cast of British talent — Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch et al — gathered in such numbers that you would be forgiven for thinking you were at an awards ceremony already; source material of almost legendary status written by one of the greatest thriller authors of our times.
Continue reading “Secret Lip Service” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Melancholia (2011)
Christian Geisnaes/Magnolia Pictures
The Cannes Film Festival this year bestowed on Lars von Trier the rare distinction of being persona non grata after he expressed sympathy for Adolf Hitler. While his inflammatory Nazi talk was indeed inexcusable, Mr. von Trier was probably right drawing parallels between himself and a dictator reviled by the world. But unlike Hitler, Mr. von Trier does deserve our sympathies. After being taken to task by critics for systematically subjecting female protagonists to escalating cruelty throughout the “Golden Heart” and as-yet incomplete “U.S.A.: Land of Opportunities” trilogies, Mr. von Trier purposely did a 180 with “Antichrist,” in which the woman is the tormentor. But his critics only grew more vocal.
Continue reading “The Loss of It All” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 (2011)
Warner Brothers Pictures
The end of the “Harry Potter” saga is more than the culmination of a decade-spanning big-screen standard. For the legions of fans that have devoured J. K. Rowling’s books and their movie adaptations, most of whom are now well into their college years and beyond, this is in many ways a coda to childhood itself.
So it’s no great surprise the crowds have turned out in droves and a record-breaking opening weekend is expected. The auditoriums showing “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2” after all are serving witness to what is essentially the world’s largest wake, a final chance to toast Harry, Ron, Hermione, Voldemort, Muggles, Hogwarts, Dumbledore, Snape and the other familiars before they go gently into the proverbial good night.
Continue reading “When Harry Met His Fate . . .” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 1 (2010)
Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros. Pictures
The beginning of the story’s end comes to life in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 1,” the seventh and penultimate entry in the cinematic juggernaut. Less a conventional “H. P.” film than a road movie rocked by physical and hormonal turmoil, David Yates’s third crack at the franchise goes to a dark, interesting place, even if the whole enterprise feels rather played-out, so last decade.
Continue reading “The Fellowship of the Horcrux” »
MOVIE REVIEW
44 Inch Chest (2010)
The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival
“Sexy Beast” scribes Louis Mellis and David Scinto team up once again with acting talents Ray Winstone and Ian McShane for a well-observed study of the male ego. Those hoping for a sequel of sorts will find themselves in aurally familiar territory, but this is a very different beast and it’s anything but sexy.
Continue reading “Decline Gets Better With Rage” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Limits of Control (2009)
Teresa Isasi-Isasmendi/Focus Features
In “The Limits of Control,” Jim Jarmusch disappears so thoroughly into his elliptical style that he’s made an impossibly obtuse, arid film. It’s a vague abstraction of images, albeit ones framed with dreamlike, painterly gusto by rock-star DP Christopher Doyle. An exercise in gaudy self-indulgence, the film plods along through a series of cumbersome encounters, testing not the limits of control, but of patience.
Continue reading “Hit Man of La Mancha” »