MOVIE REVIEW
Captain Phillips (2013)
Hopper Stone/Columbia Pictures
Critics are probably giddy at the prospect of making seasickness the gag line of their “Captain Phillips” reviews, given that handheld camerawork is the stock in trade of director Paul Greengrass. All joking aside, consider it fair warning, as one could conceivably get queasy before Tom Hanks’s eponymous captain even sets sail. Once at sea, the photography actually seems placid, perhaps because you’ve grown accustomed to the shakiness or it simply pales in comparison to the relentlessly turbulent unfolding of this fact-based drama about the 2009 Somali pirates’ hijacking of the container ship Maersk Alabama.
Continue reading “On Stranger Tides” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Che (2008)
Daniel Daza/IFC Films
The complicated life of Ernesto “Che” Guevara — idealistic doctor, determined revolutionary, postmortem counter-cultural symbol — is fodder enough for dozens of movies, so it’s no surprise that Steven Soderbergh decided to make two. The magnum opus of a director increasingly drawn towards experimentalism, the nearly five-hour “Che” divides into “The Argentine” and “Guerilla,” with each focused on the defining periods of Che’s career as a revolutionary. Experiencing the “roadshow” version – in which the two films are combined in one sitting with a 15-minute intermission – can be taxing, but there’s no questioning the scope and depth of this achievement.
Continue reading “You Say He Wrought a Revolution” »