Dense and beautifully shot, My Life as Abraham Lincoln is as intentionally confused as is its main character, Cindy (Carolyn Luft), who attempts to navigate the converging juxtapositions of memory, expectations, the vacillating importance of matrimony, and a patriarchal society. For Cindy, her life is comprised of a series of iconographies. Photos of her best friends that […]
Aug03
Weekend Arena: 8/3
Are you ready for another remake? I suppose the real question is whether or not we have a choice. Regardless, Total Recall gets a PG-13 face lift this weekend, so don’t count on catching a flash of the three-breasted alien from Paul Verhoeven’s solid first take on this story. You might also want to prepare for two hours […]
The based-on-a-true-story, Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Film, In Darkness, positions us just there: in the sewers with raw humanity and inhumanity unrelentingly clashing in each scene. On the streets above, the darkness is metaphorical but palpable. Lives are exchanged like currency and sympathy is non-existent. Directed by Agnieszka Holland, this film is set is Lvov, Poland […]
Jul27
Weekend Arena: 7/27
The Watch: Tower Heist has made me wary of Ben Stiller movies, but the recent New Yorker article about his attention to script detail and his desire to make more movies like Greenberg and The Cable Guy make me want to see this. Sure, it’s another alien-invasion film, but at least it wasn’t released during the Great […]
As numerous news outlets have shown us over the past week, James Holmes entered a Colorado theater during the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises. He then allegedly opened fire, killing twelve people and wounding many others. The twenty-four-year old Holmes recently appeared in court for a preliminary hearing in which his hair was dyed a fading […]
Christopher Nolan has delivered in his final installment to the Dark Knight trilogy, and he does it with a solid, reflective narrative that – for the most part – avoids the faux philosophy that riddles The Dark Knight. As to prevent spoilers from creeping into this analysis, I’ll focus on the narrative’s arc that fittingly echoes moments […]
I’ll assume other movies are opening this weekend, but none of them will be watched. We should probably also mourn the fates of any film opening in the next three weeks as well, which means The Watch and Killer Joe are probably destined to small-screen releases for quite a while. The Dark Knight Rises opens this weekend, […]
Despite Alex Pettyfer’s presence as Adam, Magic Mike is not about the beginning of a male stripper who is down on his luck and just plain lazy. I’m not even sure it’s really about being a male stripper – much like Boogie Nights isn’t just about being a porn star. While Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is better […]
As we count down the weeks until The Dark Knight Rises and get our superhero fix through webslinging teenagers, we might as well embrace a documentary about a potential interloper, Robert DeNiro’s turn as a world famous psychic bound to be kin to the devil, the fourth installment of a mediocre animated franchise, and Martin Scorsese’s presentation of […]