Jean-Claude Lother/Pathé
MOVIE REVIEW
Rock’n Roll (2017)
Guillaume Canet directs, co-writes and stars in “Rock’n Roll,” a navel-gazing musical satire on the French film industry that centers on him and real-life partner, Marion Cotillard.
After a much-younger costar (Camille Rowe) breaks the news to him that he’s no longer a cinematic sex symbol, the plot thrusts Guillaume (Mr. Canet) into full midlife crisis, partying and carousing until embarrassing cell phone footage of his debauchery ends up on YouTube and shooting up Botox to a point that jeopardizes the continuity of his new film. He’s still able to line up directorial projects thanks to his Oscar-winning girlfriend, Marion (Ms. Cotillard), but she’s preoccupied with mastering a Quebecois accent (and doing Céline Dion tributes) in preparation for an upcoming film role.
Continue reading “Requiem pour un fou” »
Christine Plenus/Sundance Selects
MOVIE REVIEW
Two Days, One Night (2014)
The arrival of Marion Cotillard‘s star wattage into the midst of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne‘s template of realist urban travails in “Two Days, One Night” turns out to have little effect on the brothers’ business model, which trundles merrily onward as if nothing untoward had happened. It does though bring to mind some fresh questions about their success rate, especially for any refuseniks already inclined to wonder how reliably they succeed at all.
Continue reading “Labor Pains” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Rust and Bone (2012)
Roger Arpajou/Sony Pictures Classics
Jacques Audiard knows how to inhabit the body. In his films he manages to bring us inside the bodies of his characters so that we can also feel what they are feeling. But not really their emotions — Mr. Audiard has less time for emotions than almost any other filmmaker currently working. What he is somehow able to convey is the actual physical sensation of swimming in the ocean, dancing in a nightclub or hitting someone in the head.
Continue reading “Twist of Fates” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Ron Phillips/Warner Brothers Pictures
Although “The Dark Knight Rises" is chock-full of revelations and twists, this review doesn't reveal anything but the odd spoiler contained — so proceed at your peril.
Full disclosure: This reviewer is not much of a fan of superhero or comic-book films. In fact, I haven’t even seen “Marvel’s The Avengers” or “The Amazing Spider-Man,” which for some may disqualify me from being able to write about their rival in the 2012 summer blockbuster stakes, “The Dark Knight Rises.” Luckily, Batman is the least superhuman of all the comic-book heroes, blessed — as he is — with a distinct lack of superpowers. And Christopher Nolan hasn’t seemed particularly interested in making traditional comic book films in his helming of the franchise so far. As such, I really loved “The Dark Knight” and still believe it to be up there with the best American films (Hollywood or otherwise) of the last 30 years. But that was essentially a crime film, if a slightly fantastical one.
The first thing to say is that “The Dark Knight Rises” is a very different from its predecessor. If “Batman Begins” was a dark, psychological martial arts film and “The Dark Knight” was demented tech-noir, “The Dark Knight Rises” is in many ways situated in much more recognizable action/spectacular territory. It contains underground lairs, bombs with ticking countdown timers and a frenetic, bombastic finale which ends with everyone looking to the skies in broad daylight, rather than the grimy, dank back alleys that Batman (Christian Bale) slinked down at the end of “The Dark Knight." In this film, the story is opened out to the world outside Gotham in a way that seems uncharacteristic: We even see the U.S. president talking about Gotham on television at one point, like it’s some kind of late-’90s asteroid-collision movie.
There’s little point in recounting the plot because it’s been public knowledge for the year or so since the first of many trailers was released. What’s so enticing about that “twilight’s last gleaming” trailer in particular was Selina Kyle’s (Anne Hathaway) whispered warning to Bruce Wayne about the oncoming reckoning from arch-villain Bane (Tom Hardy), and her asking how he “could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” In that line is the suggestion that Bane might in some way be a warped hero for our time. In the years since the last installment, we in the real world have endured the bulk of the financial crash and a collapse in belief in many of our most respected societal institutions. Might billionaire Bruce Wayne be cast as the semi-villain of the piece and have to undergo a redemption and reincarnation of sorts to emerge as a recalibrated hero for our time?
Continue reading “Bat Out of Hell” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Contagion (2011)
Claudette Barius/Warner Brothers Pictures
Even though on the surface it shares the global scale of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Babel,” Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” doesn’t have the same preoccupation with the interconnectedness of the world. And while it involves a mysterious pandemic just as Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men” and Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness” did, “Contagion” doesn’t offer similar commentaries on the eclipse of humanity. What it is, is a hypochondria-inducing thriller that will likely have you keep off the handrails as you exit the theater, head straight to the nearest Duane Reade and stockpile bulk-size surgical masks, latex gloves and hand sanitizer.
Continue reading “The Early Bird Catches the Germ” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Midnight in Paris (2011)
Roger Arpajou/Sony Pictures Classics
Critics must have desperately yearned for Woody Allen’s return to form, or else they wouldn’t have been reflexively hailing his every offering in the last decade as a return to form regardless of merit. Occasionally Mr. Allen has seemed happy to oblige, such as finally revisiting his fabled Manhattan with “Whatever Works” after a self-imposed four-year European exile. Although he has crossed the Atlantic yet again for his latest, “Midnight in Paris” deliberately channels the same deep-rooted fascination with the storied 1920s as did “Zelig,” “Bullets Over Broadway” and “Sweet and Lowdown.”
Continue reading “In an Ivory Eiffel Tower” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Inception (2010)
Stephen Vaughan/Warner Bros. Pictures
Dimensions interweave; matter twists in physics-defying contortions; and entire worlds crumble as time stands nearly still in “Inception,” Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated, hugely ambitious summer daydream. Plunging headlong into the subconscious, the filmmaker’s “Dark Knight” follow-up offers a labyrinthine journey into the heart of the contrasts between what we are and what we perceive ourselves to be.
Continue reading “To Ream the Impossible Dream” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Nine (2009)
David James/The Weinstein Company
“Nine,” Rob Marshall’s adaptation of the Broadway musical version of Federico Fellini’s “8 1/2,” unfolds in a strange netherworld located somewhere between its two prior forms. It takes stabs at evoking the dreamlike psychological reverie of Fellini’s masterpiece but stops dead for clunky, poorly-integrated musical numbers. The dialogue alludes to the transformative power of cinema while the picture remains aesthetically earthbound, frozen by pedestrian prettified visual compositions and blatantly artificial stagecraft that hasn’t transitioned well.
Continue reading “All That Jizz” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Public Enemies (2009)
Peter Mountain/Universal Studios
“Public Enemies,” Michael Mann’s latest opus of organized crime, will divide its viewers into two camps. They will consist, respectively, of those who support the application of the harsh, grainy digital cinematography – that has become his preferred method of working – to a period piece and those who do not.
Continue reading “Being Hit by a Smooth Criminal” »