Reviews
There was a time when young men from small towns in Texas were forced to ship out to New York or Hollywood in order to fulfill their dream of seeing themselves on the big screen.
It is these kinds of shifts and merges which keep The Holy Girl elusive and mysterious, away from the quantification that would weigh its appropriateness as a Weinstein-worthy “prestige” product. Distinctiveness hasn't yet given way to brand-naming.
Tropical Malady, even more than the Thai director's wonderfully opaque and complexly mundane previous film Blissfully Yours, relies heavily on emotional signification rather than theoretical distancing.
What is it that one remembers and loves about Sam Fuller's movies? Is it a worldview? Is it those craggy, boldface pronouncements on “the nature of war?”
The Village seems acutely aware of the relationship between filmmaking and mythmaking, an inquiry all too welcome in the face of society’s current desire to dead-end culture into the morass of reality television.
In contemporary Hollywood product, shopworn words like “honor” and “loyalty” turn up as frequently as “freedom” and “liberty” in a George W. Bush campaign speech, and with similar impact.
With its three hours nearly all comprised of clips from other people’s work and selections from the public record, Los Angeles Plays Itself, while impressively comprehensive, never pretends to be empirical in its approach.
“The American Problem,” so-called, has undeniably been the Cannes-defining cog around which the hot-button cinema of the past two-plus years has rotated.
Just as musical taste is as individualized and unaccountable as a predilection for shellfish or eggs-over-easy, Spike Lee’s films are as personalized as those of any American director working today.
Though its narrative precision has a way of making decisions feel predetermined, Maria Full of Grace benefits from these jarring transitions, its point-to-point speed deepening our sense of Maria’s impulsive character.