Chris Wisniewski
Most of the time, Hoffman depicts Tolstoy as a doddering, grandfatherly old genius; his accomplishments and inner turmoil are alluded to, discussed, and debated by others, but never given dramatic expression.
Cuarón's surprisingly bold aesthetic is self-consciously dazzling, but it can't be considered groundbreaking. The film's long-take, pseudo-verité style seamlessly marries Saving Private Ryan’s and The Son’s radically divergent takes on documentary-style realism.
All of this is really a polite way of saying that lately, Almodóvar has gotten a free pass from critics, who received his last two movies, Bad Education and Volver, with (too much) enthusiasm. They’re both sensuous, smartly conceived films, but they also trip over their own ambitions.
At 53, with one Palme d'or under his belt, von Trier is too old and established to be called an enfant terrible. Nevertheless, he's built a career on controversy. His artistic relevance has always depended more or less on his capacity to get a rise out of his audience.
In Leslie Cockburn’s American Casino, a former mortgage bond salesman makes a familiar argument when he asserts that the country’s drive towards fiscal suicide was fueled by “greed.”
" It is important to blur the line between what is real and what is not and to get people to think about reality and perception. If you show everything, you make this path very clear and precise, and it doesn’t help the film."
Brüno touches upon all of these subjects, plus racism, the swinger lifestyle, lousy parenting, international politics, and more, tackling such a random menu of issues that it feels both overstuffed and underdeveloped at the same time.
Farberbock wisely ignores the larger political context for his historical drama. Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin are mentioned in passing, as are fascism and central planning, but these references almost function as red (ahem) herrings.
Assayas captures the philosophical and emotional subtext of each of these mundanities with a delicate and droll touch, as the silences and spaces between the characters continually threaten to pierce the film’s austere surface and reveal the depth of the family drama underneath.
Spirited, exciting, and richly entertaining though it may be, the latest Star Trek doesn't even try to be a good Star Trek movie—and by the standards of the franchise, it certainly isn't (this seems to be Abrams's apparently successful trick).
Anyone who’s interested enough in burlesque to sit through Deirdre Allen Timmons’s documentary A Wink and a Smile probably already knows much of what the film has to say about its often misunderstood subject.
The Wire offers a rejoinder to the valorization of the post-gay (as well as the postracial) by positing that race, gender, sexuality, and class all help to shape our experience of social life and determine how we function within social and political institutions.
At this point in his career, Haynes has transcended the queer ghetto and connected with broad, diverse audiences who approach his cinema from a multiplicity of perspectives and for whom Haynes’s biography matters less than their own in determining how they understand and appreciate his movies.
The movie is driven by a restless curiosity, but it occasionally suffers from a corresponding superficiality.
Given the strength of the source material and the pedigree of its cast and crew, Doubt may be the ultimate low-risk, high-reward prestige product, and it would be wrong for me to suggest that Shanley has produced anything less than a gripping piece of work.
With no small bias, and a corresponding sense of urgency and advocacy, I implore you to see Milk—not because it’s a perfect film or even a great one, but because it is inspiring and deeply moving, beautiful and sad, searingly personal and boldly political.
You would think that a cross-cultural, cross-religious lesbian romance should have enough built-in conflict to sustain an 80-minute feature, but Shamim Sarif‘s I Can't Think Straight slumps and stretches its way from its first uninspired set piece.
An American Werewolf in London, Night Gallery: “The Cemetery,” Pumpkinhead, Meet Me in St. Louis, Salem’s Lot, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Hush,“ Black Sabbath: “A Drop of Water”
The unnerving tension between the overly cheery Poppy and the explosively confrontational Scott as the emotional and narrative center of Happy-Go-Lucky.
Maybe sometime in the next decade, the Iraq War will get its Platoon or its Full Metal Jacket, but for now, we’ll have to keep waiting for a memorably incisive, dramatically successful cinematic treatment—at least, from a fiction film.