As the title suggests, Behind the Candelabra, in part, is about deception. The archetype for twentieth-century flamboyance, Liberace (Golden Globe winner Michael Douglas), refuses to age in front of his audience with the aide of numerous plastic surgeries, wigs, and makeup. His lover cum adopted son – sorta – convinces himself that he is the only one […]

 

 

Sick of Valentine’s Day? Need a day to purge the cloying bombardment of flowers, cards, and chocolates?

 

 

From the cuts between time differentiated by the presence of bruises and broken bones, to the seamless transitions from black and white shootouts to crimson-tinted, slow-motion shots of the prelude and aftermath of carnage, Haywire is vintage Soderbergh – perhaps most in its minimalistic qualities. There are plenty of aesthetic touches and attention paid to detail, whether it […]

 

 

A number of films employ an infidelity motif to frame, expand, or elaborate on a plot. Often, the third act of a film hinges on the act and steers the audience toward an interpretation of one character or another. Take a recent movie like the The Kids Are Alright, where infidelity attempts to vilify two characters – […]

 

 

Pardon the superlative, but one of the most overlooked movies of the past ten years has to be Wonder Boys, a film directed by Curtis Hanson that follows Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas), an English Professor who deals with a crumbling marriage of his own undoing, a long-term affair that has been impregnated with, well, pregnancy, the visit of […]

 

 

“You know when you meet someone for the first time and there’s this instant attraction?” asks Alex Forrest of Dan Gallagher over a drink, echoing the trope of love (or lust) at first sight that provides and sustains agency within characters progenated in hundreds of plays, books, or movies. “This instant attraction,” she says with a grin […]