The oddest thing about Nichols's Spielberg mashup is that its strengths and weaknesses are the exact opposite of what you might expect from the creator of Mud and Take Shelter. There are moments of iconic beauty and visual terror, but the writing is plodding and the slow pace eventually makes one realize just how little story there is to unfold. .
Still, it's hard to overstate just how deeply resentment of Duke runs in North Carolina, how much class, race, and gender divisions made people not just want to believe the accusations were true but assume they must be.
Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some!! isn't exactly Men With Guns--it doesn't deliberately push mainstream audiences away--but neither is it the follow up to Boyhood that I was hoping for.
Pop quiz: You find out your father/brother/uncle/neighbor stole a bunch of priceless religious artifacts from an abbey in Nazi Germany. What do you do?
Phil’s Camino gets its premiere at SXSW this month. From the film’s press release: Directed by filmmaker, pilgrim and author, Annie O’Neil and filmmaker Jessica Lewis, the engaging films tells… Continue reading "Phil’s Camino — Sneak Peek"
In HBO’s psychotherapy melodrama In Treatment, Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) shares a counselor’s riddle with a patient: “Why doesn’t a cigarette smoker think a cigarette can kill him?”… Continue reading "An Inconvenient Truth (Guggenheim, 2006) — 10 Years Later"
It’s morning in Manhattan and the legion of the city’s models rise. They dress in a beautiful catalog of lingerie, skirts and stilettos and open their cabinets full of luxury makeup and eyeliner. When they hail taxis with cutting precision, they clutch their designer purses in their other arms. All of this opening scene takes place to the sound of KT Tunstall 2005 pop hit, “Suddenly I See,” which is perhaps a little too on the mark. We hear lyrics like, “She’s a beautiful girl / and everything around her is a silver pool of light,” and “Suddenly I see / This is what I want to be,” and we can’t help but wonder if The Devil Wears Prada will be 109 minutes of glorifying the fashion industry.
There is a certain stigma attached to adults watching animated films, as if they are doing something that is only for children. Henn works to change that misconception, “We create films that are hopefully enjoyed by everybody.”
When was the last time you actually watched Snow White?
By any standard, Room is a film full of meaning. But compared to the other contenders for Best Picture, including Spotlight, The Big Short and The Revenant, Room possesses a singularly ambitious vision.
