Tuesday, June 7 2011
Deadly Cocktail, Perfect Mix: Styles Clash in Blue Estate 3
Even in meeting the demands of the crime noir genre, and giving the story a cooling off period Viktor Kalvachev brings an intensity to Blue Estate.
Tuesday, November 16 2010
‘Winter’s Bone’: Where Crime and Loss are the Only Family
A tough 17-year-old dropout searches for her missing father in the poverty- and meth-scared hills of the Missouri Ozarks.
Thursday, September 2 2010
‘Ajami’ Tells of the Struggle to Survive By Any Means Necessary
An unflinching human look at the struggle of Jews, Arab Muslims, and Arab Christians to live together in at least a fragile manner.
Tuesday, July 27 2010
‘Girl by the Lake’: An Excellent Premise for a Classic Detective Story
Andrea Molaioli displays the confidence of a veteran filmmaker and lets the story play out without resorting to overly clever techniques.
Monday, July 19 2010
New Jurisdiction: How Will the Dark, Brooding ‘Luther’ Fare Stateside?
Airing on BBC America later in the year, the BBC's recent dark crime series, Luther, deserves to do as well stateside as it's doing here in the UK.
Tuesday, February 9 2010
Azrael #1-3
Scorsese-inspired and Petraeus-infused, Fabian Nicieza and Ramon Bachs' new Azrael is an incendiary powder keg, commenting one everything from the War on Terror to its title character's relevance to the very purpose of faith.
Monday, November 16 2009
Boston Noir by Dennis Lehane, Ed.
This anthology is a lot like the city it aims to depict: occasionally impressive, at times insincere, and very proud of its quirks and foibles.
Thursday, November 5 2009
The Boy Next Door: A Novel by Irene Sabatini
Sabatini’s book exudes an authenticity and warmth that can’t come from an author’s imagination alone, but from a lifetime of listening and observing.
Friday, October 24 2008
Identities in Flux
Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York is performance art as civilization-annihilating Godzilla, whereas Eastwood's Changeling is a film that wins the stranger than fiction category, hands-down.
Wednesday, July 9 2008
Dreamland by Tom Gilling
Really, someone should start a union for mysterious women in thrillers and demand better conditions.
