Colin Farrell, donning a rather “Joaquin Phoenix in Her” disposition and attire, sits on the couch, facing away from his presumed wife as she tells him the details of the man for whom she’s leaving, doesn’t say much.
Back when Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos first clambered barefaced upon the international stage with his daring Dogtooth, quite a few hastened to mention its striking resemblance to Arturo Ripstein’s similarly self-contained The Castle of Purity, made some 35 years earlier. In the wake of his first English-language effort The Lobster, one might even go further and compare all that Lanthimos has done thus far to Ripstein’s film: the …
Of course, Guardians isn’t perfect, as it struggles to find a consistent tone. Sometimes it wants to be more adult, with bawdier language and sexual innuendo. For instance, Quill’s rumination that “If I had a black light, this place would look like a Jackson Pollock painting!” is pretty sophisticated for mainstream PG-13 fare. Other times, it feels as though the filmmakers are pandering to a much younger audience. You can almost visualize a ‘Dancing Groot’ doll gyrating in your kid’s Happy Meal.
For every good sequence, there’s one that’s muddled with bad camerawork and editing. Like a lot of blockbuster action, it’s barely legible; you have to work to keep up with it, and that work interferes with the enjoyment. The story also sags in the middle, as it seems to exist mainly to fill out the run-time. The protagonists take the MacGuffin to a dude they wish to sell it to, but the only real function of the section is to exposit what it is. It turns a big chunk of the plot into a shrug.
Twenty years ago, if someone said that ‘zombie romantic comedy’ was going to become an actual cinematic sub-genre, they’d have been called a witch and burned at the stake. And yet, they would have been right, and Fantasia 2014 has seen the unveiling of yet another film in the rapidly expanding genre, Life After Beth. Starring Aubrey Plaza of Parks and Recreation and Dane DeHaan, recently of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Life After Beth is best described as a zombie breakup comedy. It’s also best described as “decent, but not amazing”, a serviceable enough zom-rom-com kept afloat mostly by the supporting cast.
Bears Written by Alastair Fothergill and Adam Chapman Directed by Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey UK and USA, 2013 During its fledgling years as a film studio, the Walt Disney Company helped revolutionize the nature documentary with its True-Life Adventure series. Here, as never before, audiences could thrill to the story of seals, beavers, bears, …
With 111.5-million U.S. viewers, and a further 7.3-million in Canada, Super Bowl XLVIII was the most-watched in history. The commercial spots were the most expensive for any TV broadcast in any given year, and there were plenty of big name stars and A-list directors who helped create these very expensive advertisements. John Hillcoat, director of …
Wreck-It Ralph Written by Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee with additional story material by John C. Reilly Directed by Rich Moore USA 2012 imdb If you haven’t seen Wreck-It Ralph, go see it, it’s really good, no matter what my Grouchy McGroucherson co-host on the Mousterpiece podcast has said and written, but the purpose of this …
Wreck-It Ralph Directed by Rich Moore Written by Jennifer Lee and Phil Johnston USA, 2012 If, as some theorists believe, there are alternate universes where the vast infinity of possibilities in life actually come true, there’s a world out there where The Princess and the Frog was Walt Disney Animation Studios’ biggest hit since The …
Wreck-It Ralph Directed by Rich Moore Written by Jennifer Lee, Phil Johnson U.S.A., 2012 There was a time when the big family film of the year that everyone wanted to see was in fact the Disney animated feature. It was so for decades literally, up until 1995 when Pixar, which sees its films distributed by …
*Disclaimer: the following is based on and an expansion of an article written by Peter Howell, the Toronto Star Movie Critic. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a film of the lowest common denominator adds nothing to the institution of cinema. But as profiteers like Adam Sandler have already understood, when money speaks, truth is …
Carnage Directed by Roman Polanski Written by Roman Polanski and Yasmina Reza 2011, France/Germany/Spain Roman Polanski has made his first comedy since 1972’s What?, and it’s very funny. Comedy is the easiest and the hardest genre to review. The biggest question is how many laughs does the film contain, but you have to pinpoint why …
Carnage Directed by Roman Polanski Written by Roman Polanski (screenplay), Yasmina Reza (play) 2011, France Carnage is a lean story about a group of people who cannot leave an apartment. Sometimes they manage to go into an alternate room, even as far as getting into an elevator, but somehow each person is pulled together again. …
Carnage Directed by Roman Polanski Written by Roman Polanski (screenplay), Yasmina Reza (play) 2011, USA Today proved to be the most populous screening at the Lincoln Center yet, and I should have known better. As the Q&A for Miss Bala came to an end, a rush of press got up and headed for the exit. …
We Need to Talk about Kevin Written by Lynne Ramsay and Rory Kinnear (novel by Lionel Shriver) Directed by Lynna Ramsay UK & USA, 2011 Hidden at the back of our mind is the darkness that roams the labyrinth. The minotaur becomes the unspeakable evil, the figure with the body of a man and the …