The New Girlfriend Written & Directed by François Ozon France, 2014 The latest from prolific French auteur François Ozon opens on a somber note as Claire (Anaïs Demoustier) recounts her lifelong friendship with the deceased Laura (Isild Le Besco), whose untimely death has left her grieving husband David (Romain Duris) alone with their infant daughter. …
“I wanted to make a film about an orgy,” said writer-director Patrick Brice to an enthusiastic audience following a screening of his film The Overnight. With an impeccable cast featuring Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godrèche, he brings a surprisingly poignant intimacy and earnestness to a story that, in other hands with other actors, could easily have gotten lost in its own kinkiness.
With his debut feature Creep, director Patrick Brice brought audiences an exercise in discomfort. A mockumentary about a man who answers a mysterious ad on Craigslist, the film deftly blended cringe comedy and horror. Brice’s second feature, The Overnight, finds the director working in a similar vein, though it forgoes the horror. In its first half, the film successfully mines humor from its supremely awkward narrative. But it is far more than just a cringe comedy. With the help of a stellar ensemble cast and an intelligent script, Brice demonstrates that he can make audiences think just as well as he can make them squirm.
At first glance, Tim Burton’s latest, Big Eyes, appears to be a departure from the filmmaker’s general proclivities towards the grotesque and fantastical. Scissor-handed youths, murderous barbers, and obnoxious ghouls are nowhere to be found in this deceptively straightforward biopic of kitsch-master Walter Keane and his wife, Margaret. A cursory glance at the film might lead one to question just what Burton thinks he’s doing in the realm of realism.
Excavating through the vastness of television history to feature programs from broadcast past that were critically maligned and/or lost on the way to home video.
More than perhaps any other director, the work of Ernst Lubitsch has been the most noticeable influence on Wes Anderson’s style. Though the great German-American writer-director, most prolific in the 1930s and 1940s, was never quite so aesthetically bold in the look of his sets, he too was preoccupied with meticulous staging for comedy within his chosen locales, be they the titular Shop Around the Corner or the Parisian hotel of Ninotchka; The Grand Budapest Hotel is set in a fictional European country, the Republic of Zubrowka, another Lubitsch trait from works like The Merry Widow and The Love Parade, though The Shop Around the Corner happens to be set in the city Anderson’s mountaintop lodging house takes its name from. He garnered the descriptor of ‘the Lubitsch touch’ thanks to the moving sincerity that always made itself evident within even his more broad comedic premises, and Anderson’s own best work is that in which a recognisable humanism always makes itself known and potent even within the stylised stiltedness through which most of his characters are written and performed.
Saving Mr. Banks Written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith Directed by John Lee Hancock USA, 2013 “They said only God could make a tree,” Walt Disney says proudly as he strolls down Main Street, U.S.A. in the Disneyland theme park, late in Saving Mr. Banks. Walt, as he prefers to be known, gladhands all …
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Written by Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall Directed by Edgar Wright USA, Canada, 2010 If a big-budget blockbuster opens, and nobody goes to see it, does it make a noise? In the case of 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, an ambitious adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s cult favorite graphic …
It’s going to take a lot more than skill for Cru Jones to conquer the toughest BMX challenge in the world. It’s going to take a miracle.
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III Written by Roman Coppola Directed by Roman Coppola USA, 2013 Opens Feb. 15 in Toronto and Montreal In the opening scene of A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, the titular Swan (played by Charlie Sheen) is given a psych evaluation, wherein the screen …
In its glorious and barreling 87 minutes, Anderson and Baumbach, have taken the gist of Dahl’s book and carefully expanded it into everything you would expect it to be. Fantastic Mr. Fox Directed by Wes Anderson Wes Anderson joins Spike Jonze in adapting a much beloved children’s literature in the same year. First Jonze delivered …