Bruce greenwood

Atom Egoyan’s serpentine erotic thriller, Exotica, is a flawless exercise in understated urgency. Flashbacks, arresting visuals, and Mychael Danna’s score slowly reveal a web of strangers inextricably linked by one man’s suffering. It’s less a cinematic puzzle than an organic realization. When all of the mysteries are unraveled, you know a little bit more about the Human condition. Though many consider The Sweet Hereafter to be Egoyan’s masterpiece, Exotica is fearless indie filmmaking at its best.

The closing moments of the 2009 reboot of Star Trek saw a revival of its source material’s famous slogan regarding the ongoing mission of the Enterprise:

The Place Beyond the Pines, so called for the English translation of the Mohawk word “Schenectady,” is close to a carousel in structure, one that would not be out of place at that traveling carnival where we first meet Luke in an extended tracking shot. Round and round it goes, taking the audience on an exacting, circular up-and-down ride. Cianfrance, along with co-writers Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, lets the film linger in moments, allowing it a hypnotic, novelistic pacing.

“Although masterful in its art and creative limitations, the film direly falls apart at the end…” Meek’s Cutoff Directed by Kelly Reichardt Yet again, director Kelly Reichardt and  screenwriter Jon Raymond collaborate to raise modern-day contemporaneous issues, this time in a pre-colonial fashion with Meek’s Cutoff.  As 2006’s Old Joy confronts the dissolutions of brotherhood, …