Stephen Berkman/Roadside Attractions
The annual ritual of best-of lists can seem arbitrary, obsessive-compulsive or even narcissistic. When any aspiring critic can set up a blog or a Flixter account to get his or her two cents in, do readers even care if a critic has credentials or expertise? Do people even read movie reviews anymore, when they’ve become reliant on listicles or quotables that appear in ad copies and on Rottentomatoes? As publications around the country rush to meet the bottom line to appease shareholders, some of the most brilliant and erudite voices have become orphaned in the process. Those who are serious about a career in film criticism have probably all paused to ask whether this is still honest work or just a frivolous pursuit.
Continue reading “Before You Forget” »
Abbot Gensler/Sony Pictures Classics
Not for the fainthearted, the cinema of Charlie Kaufman challenges audiences to consider the multiple cerebral layers that factor into even the most mundane everyday moments, and to process narratives in entirely unexpected fashions. “Synecdoche, New York” – the first movie he’s both written and directed – adheres to that overarching motif, even if it’s otherwise unlike anything anyone’s ever seen.
Continue reading “Confessions of a Delicious Mind” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Abbot Gensler/Sony Pictures Classics
In “Synecdoche, New York,” Charlie Kaufman descends fully, firmly down the rabbit hole, lost in a dense world of complications, confusion and severe ambiguity. Whereas the Academy Award-winning screenwriter and first-time director’s better projects successfully imbue his unique, cerebral vision with a straightforward focus on matters of the heart, this one buries its humanity beneath an avalanche of high concepts. The film is original and well cast, but its insistence on being a sort of cinematic Rorschach test – open to a wide variety of interpretations and meanings – causes it to ultimately leave a rather negligible impact.
Continue reading “And All the People Merely Players” »
