After jumping into the film world with her adaptation of her own work with Gone Girl, it seems like Gillian Flynn will be moving forward with a project that has her working with one of the latest directors to take home an Oscar for Best Picture. Deadline reported on Friday that Flynn is set to …
Back in August 2013, Spike Lee launched plans for his newest movie on Kickstarter, causing a big hullabaloo in the process. People questioned whether an established director like him was taking money away from other independent filmmakers and projects, even though he clarified that more people came to Kickstarter who had never heard of the …
What’s difficult about making this list is finding a balance between a successful Kubrickian film that either predates or pays homage to Kubrick and, for lack of a better term, is a ripoff. Now that we’ve hit the apex, it’s clear that these are, regardless of influence, quality films. What sets them apart is their …
Awards ceremonies, while giving critics a chance to award the movies they feel are most deserving of praise, often also give people an opportunity to discuss cinema and what it means to them, as well as the impact film has on larger societal aspects. One such reflection occurred at the 2013 New York Film Critics …
Two films about slavery in the United States have been released barely a year apart. One is by a renegade American auteur starring American actors; the other, based on a memoir, brought to the screen by a British video artist and a cast led by Brits playing American. Despite their similar subject matter, they are …
Welcome to our “12 Years a Slave” Reviews. Review #1 12 Years a Slave Written by John Ridley Directed by Steve McQueen USA, 2013 With Hunger and Shame, Steve McQueen crafted two highly divergent, yet equally distinctive character studies of men whose respective physical existences are defined by extremity. Hunger’s Bobby Sands stays true to his political convictions in …
The Panic in Needle Park Written by Joan Dion and John Gregory Dunne; based on the book by James Mills Directed by Jerry Schatzberg USA, 1971 Al Pacino gives a riveting performance as Bobby, an energetic street hustler and heroin addict who forms a bizarre, yet accepting relationship with a homeless woman, Helen, played by …
John Dominis is best known for his work at LIFE magazine, a publication who initially hired him to cover the Korean War in 1950. Among his memorable essays Dominis covered the 1956 Olympics in Australia; water buffaloes and their boy keepers in Thailand; the celebrations for Buddha’s 2500th birthday in Burma; the early years of …
We love crime movies. We may go on and on about Scorsese’s ability to incorporate Italian neo-realism techniques into Mean Streets (1973), the place of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) in the canon of postwar noir, The Godfather (1972) as a socio-cultural commentary on the distortion of the ideals of the American dream blah …
With this weekend’s Total Recall cashing in on a trend we could conceivably never see the end of (at least in this lifetime), the question I’m posing refers to what we have to look forward to, but not from bombastic, shallow-minded “anti-auteurs;” we look instead to the distinguished festival elite. Putting aside the innumerable trademarks …
Union Square Directed by Nancy Savoca Written by Nancy Savoca USA, 2011 In New York City, a shamelessly flamboyant Lucy (Mira Sorvino) arrives in Manhattan from the Bronx, hoping to escape a cascade of emotional problems. In search of an oasis amongst the vast concrete jungle, Lucy finds her way to the doorsteps of Jenny …
The French gave us the word “demimonde” – literally, half the world. But what it has come to mean in English, or so says Webster, is “a distinct circle or world that is often an isolated part of a larger world.” Storytellers have always held a fascination with the dark side of human nature; that …
Somehow we’d fallen into calling her “Luce the Moose.” No one even remembers why. After that, I used to buy her some kind of moose – a stuffed doll, a carving, anything – every Christmas. Her given name was Lucy Sylvia Mesce. Lucia, actually, but other than her immigrant parents, I don’t think anybody ever …
A while back we posted an article titled Alternate Universe Movie Posters, a collection of some really amazing alternate movie posters including one for a Halloween film starring Kim Novak and Robert Mitchum. Recently Peter Stults was inspired by those poster designs and decided to move forward with the theme by creating images for what …
I always hear people say they don’t make movies like they used to.Well truthfully they don’t, but they still make great movies each and every year. 2011 was another successful year and while I only listed about 50 films below, I honestly could have stretched the list to at least 75 movies I’d feel comfortable …
Shame Directed by Steve McQueen Written by Abi Morgan and Steve McQueen 2011, UK If there is one aspect of human psychology that is truly at odds with our evolutionary imperative, it is shame. It’s not that shame is antithetical to sex, but it is a revulsion of the body and a retreat from the …
Throughout November, SOS staffers will be discussing the movies that made them into film fanatics. (click here for the full list) There was no a-ha! moment, no seeing of the light, no epiphany. I’d loved movies since I was a kid, had been a buff since my early teens, but there was no one, shining …
Though time will only tell if Baz Luhrmann is the right filmmaker to tackle The Great Gatsby, I remain a skeptic. The material may suggest a certain grandiosity that Luhrmann has proved to be able to bring to life but the story remains fundamentally simple and down to earth. The novel is highly critical of …
Shame Directed by Steve McQueen Written by Steve McQueen UK, 2011 New York city hasn’t looked so beautifully cold and ironically isolating for quite some time as it does in Shame, Steve McQueen’s second collaboration with everyone’s favourite actor Michael Fassbender, the recipient of the best actor gong at Venice for his brave and penetrating performance of a …
Shame Directed by Steve McQueen Written by Abi Morgan and Steve McQueen 2011, UK If there is one aspect of human psychology that is truly at odds with our evolutionary imperative, it is shame. It’s not that shame is antithetical to sex, but it is a revulsion of the body and a retreat from the …
Telluride 2011, Day 4 Tilda Swinton is the ideal Telluride guest. She’s just famous enough to provide the fest with a bit of an exclusive sheen, but she has more than enough credibility as an artist to suit the fest’s reputation of catering to people who are serious about film. At the public tribute and …
Director and star Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender who previously colloborated in Hunger, (the 2009 biopic on Bobby Sands an imprisoned IRA member and leader of the 1981 hunger strike) have reunited for Shame. Written by Steve McQueen and Abi Morgan (Brick Lane) Shame is about a 30-something man living in New York who is …