Reviews
Though the film perhaps tries a mite too hard to ingratiate itself to the viewer (rarely does it leave an emotion not underlined), its rhythms are well matched to its two main characters’ restless pursuits for niche fame and artistic fulfillment.
The scaled-down war movies of today offer models of filmmaking opposed to bloated productions of previous eras, even the supposed heyday of post-Vietnam soul-searching. Yet a sad truth remains: to judge by box-office numbers and that vague barometer called the national zeitgeist, audiences don’t care.
Still, clever and cogent beats idiotic and incoherent, and Iron Man is spryer than the overwhelming majority of films in its budget range. Favreau showed a talent for framing handmade special effects in the enjoyable Jumanji-in-space romp Zathura, and Iron Man’s best moments are similarly low-fi.
In his motor-mouth heyday, Korine’s scope of reference was undeniable, even if that width came at sacrifice of depth. Nothing could pass through this great trivializer without being shrunken, anecdoted, and turned into tossed-off quirk or allusion in a contextual vacuum.
The children in Rambow, set around 1983 or thereabouts, might as well be wielding digital cameras or pocket-sized cell-phone cams (and in fact, the film might have been less self-consciously precious had it been set in the present).
The action of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay picks up mere minutes after the end of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, but in that brief period of time all of the anarchic energy seems to have seeped out of the franchise.
Some documentarians aim to answer and resolve, but Morris is almost too content to leave us adrift in ambiguity, regardless of the political, moral, and epistemological repercussions.
Stuff and Dough, opening this week for the first time in the U.S., charted a day-trip drug run that's no more straightforward than Lazarescu's odyssey.
If nothing else, The Life Before Her Eyes offers a unique take on post-traumatic stress disorder—or is it an acid flashback?—weaving flowers, bugs, cougars, William Blake, swimming pools, and Alice in Wonderland into Diana's wavy gravy of hallucinations.
Backs are broken and then (rather comically) re-broken, legs are amputated, and all the while the menacing, if plastic-looking ivy begins to spread, taking a particular interest in open wounds and eventually—when all hope for the humans seems lost—giggling.
