Friday, January 20 2012
Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Haywire’ Showcases MMA Star Gina Carano
In frames that are both rough and precise, in skewed angles on clandestine meetings or long tracking shots of Mal in motion, you're invited to think of the world like she does.
Lucasfilm’s ‘Red Tails’ Is Well-Intentioned But Thin
Red Tails is enjoyable enough and, like other George Lucas films, more throwback pulp than somber drama.
‘The City Dark’ Looks at Effects of Too Much Light
These scenes don't come together so much as they offer a series of impressions, circling around the idea that light pollution is bad. Still, the film allows, that's not to say darkness is good.
Wednesday, January 18 2012
‘Crazy Horse’ Shows Stripping is Working
Crazy Horse is focused on the laborers who make strip show fantasies, the artists and technicians, trainers and performers.
Tuesday, January 17 2012
‘Titicut Follies’ at Stranger Than Fiction
For documentaries, the question of what's true for whom remains resounding, no matter good intentions or willful exploitations. Titicut Follies reveals multiple truths, but leaves you to sort out what they can mean.
Monday, January 16 2012
‘Man on a Mission’: Lord British in Space
Like any other industry, the space travel industry is first a function of innovation and vision, and then, increasingly, a function of more mundane and immediate concerns, namely, money.
Friday, January 13 2012
‘America’s Most Hated Family’ Is Still Mad at the World
It's not so much that America's Most Hated Family provides answers or even coherent questions. But it does suggest that words, spoken and heard, might make a difference.
‘Joyful Noise’ Is Not Quite What You’d Expect
Its attention to musical performances, breaking up the melodrama and predictability, sets Joyful Noise apart.
‘Contraband’ Is About One Last Job, Again
Diego Luna plays Gonzalo like a once-hungry gangster gone soft, his belly hanging, his hair scraggling, his arrogance oozing.
Thursday, January 12 2012
‘Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory’: The West Memphis Three Go Free
A hallmark of all three Paradise Lost films has been their understanding and embrace of subjects' self-presentations. As much as the movies have commented on "society," they also contemplate how individuals see themselves.
Wednesday, January 11 2012
‘All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert’: Surviving the South
At once harrowing and heartening, Winfred Rembert's stories are represented in particularly vivid form -- dyed leather canvases.
Tuesday, January 10 2012
‘Mulberry Child’ Looks Back on the Cultural Revolution
Jian's childhood was hard: while Mao's Red Guards were jailing and torturing people, her mother was unable to show her children much affection.
Monday, January 9 2012
‘Norwegian Wood’ Offers Snowy Landscapes and a Narrow Perspective
Norwegian Wood notes in passing that students are protesting, but Watanabe tends to walk past the raucous crowds on the sidewalks as if in a dream.
Friday, January 6 2012
‘The Devil Inside’ Has Nowhere to Go
As Isabella speaks again and again to the camera -- whether in league with Michael or in mid-hysteria -- she repeats the tropes you know too well.
Thursday, January 5 2012
‘Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’ Tells a Tale of Pain, and Men and Women
Throughout the night and the next day, when they do in fact find the body, buried and hogtied, the men reveal their differing ideas about crime -- about bad and good men, and about women.
Wednesday, January 4 2012
‘The Hunter’: Feeling Bleak
If the hunter's motivation is unspoken, harrowing, haunting shots of the woods, the rain, the car speeding along the roadway, show how he feels.
Tuesday, January 3 2012
‘The Darkest Hour’ Stumbles and Bumbles
The Darkest Hour has a flabbergasting lack of stye and suspense.
Friday, December 30 2011
‘The Iron Lady’ Is Historical Mush
Meryl Streep’s performance as Margaret Thatcher is well honed, but it can’t save this doddering, amateurish spectacle.
‘A Separation’ Reveals Multiple Confinements
A Separation leads you to suspect that everyone's stories are confused by hopes and fears, whether conscious or not.
‘El Sicario, Room 164’: A Narco Executioner’s Memories
In El Sicario, Room 164, the self-admitted murderer's face hidden and his hands in motion, the violence is vivid in your mind. Of course, he may be lying.
