Reviews
Stephen Chow was at least at one point the biggest star in Asia; he may still be. As an actor, he’s affable, equally conversant with extreme physical comedy and action melodrama. As a filmmaker, his approach is endearingly idiosyncratic.
I didn’t laugh at any point in this comedy, so-called, but this isn’t as big a deal as one might think, because except for a few hard-brake punchline stops, the movie puts more of a premium on being likable than hilarious
As restless and flashy as the radicals it valorizes, Chicago 10 is an apocalyptic dispatch from the past refashioned as a slick flyer for the present.
As in his stunningly assured debut, Man Push Cart, Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani uses Chop Shop not to sentimentalize the travails of one of NYC’s multitudinous, ignored underclass, but to discover, as Arthur Miller once said of The Bicycle Thief, “Everyman’s search for dignity.”
Vantage Point is pure fantasy, more concerned with churning out a satisfying resolution through narrative gimmickry than bearing out hows or whys. But as a mishmash of current political concerns, the film can’t help but seem exploitative.
David Rice, the protagonist at the center of Doug Liman’s Jumper, possesses the mysterious ability to teleport anywhere at whim. We quickly discover, however, that he exploits his limitless potential for decidedly narrow purposes.
The Counterfeiters is the bread and butter of the Academy, not to mention film festival audiences everywhere, and as such, seems to have been designed solely to win plaudits.
If Paddy Chayefsky and Newton Minow had ever bonded over too many cocktails—secretly spiked by Neil Postman—the result might have been The Signal, a grungy warning to anyone who would rather watch than engage.
Romero has often traded in rather glib social satire since the revelation of his 1978 Dawn of the Dead; whereas Tobe Hooper and John Carpenter’s genre work has mostly been greeted with retrospective praise and analysis, Romero’s never made any bones about his intent.
For a director drawn to neurosis and insecurity, Michel Gondry is remarkably sure of himself. Insistently idiosyncratic and unworried about self-indulgence, he seems unable to second-guess his ideas—which would be a problem if his ideas weren’t so inspired.
This gloom is all quickly dispelled once Edward and Carter fully recover from their treatments and surgeries. They know they each only have roughly a year to live, but they don’t let that stop them from becoming unusually spry old men again.
Once again, with his new film The Witnesses, great French filmmaker André Téchiné surveys the intersections of sexuality and politics, while offering up a compelling study in human strength and weakness.