As the latest addition to the “white altruist” genre of cinema, The Help is most effective in its deviation from how it is portrayed through its trailer. This is not to say that the film is a failure or falls short of any expectations. Rather, it exceeds them. However, previews depict it as another incarnation of a film […]
If you’re looking for a heartwarming romp that empowers the never-ceasing power of love, perhaps The Sea Inside would not be the best bet. However, if you’re looking for a haunting discourse on euthanasia that chooses not to vilify an advocate or opposition, preferring to examine the various rationale and contradictions inherent in each, then this is […]
Despite its title, The Boxer might be the antithetical pugilist-movie. There is a boxer, Danny Flynn (Daniel Day-Lewis), and he does box, a little. At the same time, Flynn’s boxing is less a profession, and more a metaphor for the waning but never dying conflict between Irish Catholics and Protestants. And, it feels as if this […]
About six months ago, my block in Astoria was papered with pink NO PARKING signs vowing to tow anything that disrupted the filming of a movie. Within the massive trailers, reclusive celebrities hid until it was time for their close-ups, and along the sidewalk, non-celebrities grazed on coffee and donuts, spoke into walkie talkies, and removed wandering […]
I can’t help but think that Inside Job won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary on the basis that director Charles Ferguson should have won the Oscar three years prior for his debut No End in Sight, a documentary that takes an in depth look at the Bush Administration’s conduct prior to and during the Iraq […]
The prison film might be the genre most antithetical to how we view heroes and villains. As opposed to films set in courtrooms where the victim usually wins and the bad guy goes to jail to contemplate his or her crimes, the protagonists in prison films are often the guilty party, the ones who couldn’t get away […]
I Love You, Phillip Morris, exemplifies Jim Carrey’s decade-long transition from comedic goofball to charming leading man. In a way, Carrey has been emulating Tom Hanks, who was best known as a comedic actor before melding comedy sincerity in 1988’s Big. From then on, most comedic roles undertaken by Hanks could better be described as dramedies: […]
(image via AceShowbiz.com) Remember when the internet asked people to turn on their video cameras and record the events of a single day of their lives? Well, 80,000 people really did that last summer. And they shipped 4,500 hours of footage from 192 countries off to director Kevin MacDonald and editor Joe Walker. Over the last year, they […]
Confusingly, The Change-Up fluctuates between a decently acted film that boarders on endearing, and the dumbest, trope and cliché-ridden film that I’ve seen in a while. Granted, I’ve avoided watching anything Happy Madison-related, but I can’t imagine that they would fall far below the bar set by this most recent film that tackles “the grass is always […]
While it falls behind Funny Games, The Piano Teacher, Cache, and The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf is certainly worth a look in that it is a phenomenal exercise in lighting as well as a rather novel take on apocalypse-film genre. Characteristically, Haneke shoots this 2003 film with meticulous precision and strands the viewer […]