Articles tagged "emily watson"

The PopMatters Summer 2009 Movie Preview Feature

Summer of Same: June 2009

by Bill Gibron

[28.Apr.09] :. This month's "original" fare offers a take on a Sid and Marty Krofft classic, more battling seizure robots, and the retaking of '70s subway thriller. Everything old is new again.

The PopMatters Summer 2009 Movie Preview

Film DVD Review

Synecdoche New York

by Evan Sawdey

[20.Mar.09] :. Consumed with existential dread, this film captures the feeling of near-death angst remarkably well, enough to the point where it's not Caden that's feeling it -- it's the audience.

Recent DVD reviews

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008 Feature

The New Classics - The 30 Best Films of 2008

by PopMatters Staff

[16.Jan.09] :. Unlike previous years, where classics came crawling out of the celluloid woodwork with regular reckless abandon, 2008 was more calm… and considered. That's not to say that choosing 30 top titles was hard. The difficulty in placing them in some manner of rank order suggests the actual depth of quality involved.

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008 Feature

Tough and Tender - The Top 20 Female Performances of 2008

by PopMatters Staff

[14.Jan.09] :. Twenty talented ladies, 20 performances worthy of multiple little gold men. Unfortunately, as in all years, someone has to come out on top. But after looking over this impressive list, picking the preeminent turn of 2008 seems almost impossible.

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008

Short Ends and Leader

Kaufman’s ‘Synecdoche’ Is Complex, Compelling Quirk

by Bill Gibron

[18.Dec.08] :. Love isn’t easy. Neither is life. Both bring us so much sorrow and pain that it’s weird how obsessive we are over each one. We covet them both, loathe the times when we are without them,...

Short Ends and Leader

News

Charlie Kaufman as director: On the whole, he’s up to the parts

by Steven Rea [The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT)]

[6.Nov.08] :. TORONTO - “I don’t need to be mentored,” says Charlie Kaufman, a touch indignant, when asked if Spike Jonze helped out with advice on “Synecdoche, New York.” The film,...

PopWire

Synecdoche, New York

by Cynthia Fuchs

[24.Oct.08] :. Much like protagonists in previous Charlie Kaufman scripts, Caden is an artist in search of his art.

Identities in Flux

by Chris Barsanti

[24.Oct.08] :. 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.

Cinema Qua Non - Indispensable DVDs: Part 3

by PopMatters Staff

[16.Oct.08] :. Day Three - The final ten, a cross-culture collection teeming with big ideas, larger than life visions, and perhaps the greatest documentary on rugby you've probably never heard of.

Talk, Talk, Talk: October 2008

by Bill Gibron

[10.Sep.08] :. What studio suit thought this was a good idea? With four months to schedule your high priced efforts, you instead unload almost 30 overpriced pictures on an unsuspecting movie audience.

Katrin Cartlidge: The Working Actress

by Matt Mazur

[29.Aug.08] :. Whether it was through silence, grotesquerie, fury or intelligence (or, at times, lack of intelligence), Cartlidge was not afraid to upturn the dark corners of the women she portrayed.

The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep

by Cynthia Fuchs

[27.Dec.07] :. As narrator Brian Cox sets up from the start, the "true tale" of the Loch Ness monster is at once outrageous and charming.

Part 5: The Return of the Auteur

by PopMatters Staff

[22.Jun.07] :. That noise you heard near the start of the new millennium was the creative din of a brash new breed of filmmakers tearing down the traditions of mainstream moviemaking. Their motion picture mission statements -- including the ones featured on this list -- remain the rulebook for new generations of anxious film artists.

The Pay Off: The Best Film of 2006

by PopMatters Staff

[11.Jan.07] :. For many of the movies on PopMatters' 2006 list of the year's best films, it is clear that a heavy personal and professional stake was riding on the final product.

Miss Potter (2006)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[3.Jan.07] :. Chris Noonan's next-film-after-Babe doesn't engage this alternative realm except as whimsy. Beatrix is eccentric. Her "friends" are cute.

Wah-Wah (2005)

by Matt Mazur

[19.Dec.06] :. The genuinely cinematic moments in Wah-Wah are few and far between, and are generally courtesy of the skillful performances.

The Proposition (2005)

by Matt Mazur

[26.May.06] :. Nick Cave's The Proposition blends equal parts Walkabout and Sergio Leone's grim atmospherics to illustrate the brutality of imperialism.

The Proposition (2005)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[26.May.06] :. Signaling death and dryness, the flies also mark transitions from one location to another: everywhere, it seems, someone is dead or dying.

Separate Lies (2005)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[18.Oct.05] :. Minute for minute, the film has more angst, betrayal, and guilt than most daytime soaps muster in a year.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[23.Jun.03] :. Deftly rearranges any number of generic conventions, from romantic comedies, musicals, and melodramas with happy endings that can't make sense but seem inevitable and necessary.

Equilibrium (2002)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[5.Dec.02] :. Hooray for kicking opponents' heads in, fancy wirework, and twirling black topcoats.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[18.Oct.02] :. Deftly rearranges any number of generic conventions, from romantic comedies, musicals, and melodramas with happy endings that can't make sense but seem inevitable and necessary.

Red Dragon (2002)

by Todd R. Ramlow

[3.Oct.02] :. What is most politically problematic about Red Dragon is how it furthers the relationship between physical disability and psychopathology.

Gosford Park (2001)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[27.Jun.02] :. It is clear about what it is, a study of affect that is also affected.

Trixie (2000)

by Lesley Smith

The protagonist of every classic thriller is, in some way or another, a Holy Fool. From the Scarlet Pimpernel’s foppish banter to Pete Decker’s Orthodox faith, from Miss Marple’s...

The Luzhin Defence (2000)

by Howard Hann

It's disturbing that a movie adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's woeful tale of a Russian Chess grandmaster can be so trivialising.

The Luzhin Defence (2000)

by Howard Hann

It's disturbing that a movie adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's woeful tale of a Russian Chess grandmaster can be so trivialising.

Gosford Park (2001)

by Cynthia Fuchs

It is clear about what it is, a study of affect that is also affected.

Angela’s Ashes (1999)

by Renee Scolaro Rathke

It must be a daunting task to translate to film a book as enormously popular as Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. Inevitably, some devotees of McCourt’s memoir of growing up in...