Flight Directed by Robert Zemeckis Written by John Gatins 2012, USA Premiering at the closing night of the New York Film Festival, Robert Zemeckis dives back into live-action filmmaking from a twelve year motion capture hiatus with Flight. An audacious, well-matured character ensemble piece about a man whose most heroic venture may have resulted from …
Kinshasa Kids Written by Marc-Henri Wajnberg Directed by Marc-Henri Wajnberg Kinshasa Kids introduces a surreal and hostile world right from the start in its very first scenes. It opens with an exorcism ceremony. Amidst the frantic chanting and bombastic drumbeats, village priests intone their spells and try to channel demonic influences out of inflicted children …
Ginger & Rosa Directed by Sally Potter UK / Denmark / Canada, 2012 Less daring than her adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s gender bending Orlando and more accessible than the erotic Yes (with all dialogue spoken entirely in iambic pentameter)- director Sally Potter’s Ginger & Rosa is emotionally raw but disappointingly uneven in it’s storytelling. Centering …
Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay Directed by Molly Bernstein and Alan Edelstein USA, 2012 On the opposite side of the various muckraking documentaries that attempt to rile the audience over one political or social issue, there is the documentary Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay. This is a …
Leviathan Directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel France/UK/USA, 2012 It’s impossible to discuss the documentary Leviathan without comparing it to co-director Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s previous film, Sweetgrass. Sweetgrass was a documentary about sheep herders in Montana, but it eschewed all of the typical tropes of a documentary: no talking heads, no narration, no soundtrack. It …
Hyde Park on Hudson Directed by Roger Michell Written by Richard Nelson Hyde Park on Hudson explores a significant but somewhat obscure moment in history when King George VI (Samuel West) pays a visit to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Bill Murray), making him the first English monarch ever to grace the United States with his presence. …
Life of Pi Directed by Ang Lee Written by David Magee Ang Lee’s new film Life of Pi has spent four years in the making, an epic attempt by the director of Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to harness developing digital technology to film a novel that would have been utterly unfilmable as …
Passion Directed by Brian de Palma Screenplay by Brian de Palma USA / Germany, 2012 The story goes that, when asked why his new film Passion contained highly stylized touches even in scenes that did not appear to need them, its director responded simply, “Because I’m Brian de Palma.” That answer should not be taken …
The Lincoln Center has recently announced that David Chase (Sopranos) will be making his feature debut, Not Fade Away, at the 50th Anniversary of the New York Film Festival’s Centerpiece Gala (Saturday October 6th). Said to be his dream project, Not Far Away follows a group of New Jersey teenagers in 1964 as they form …