Abbas Kiarostami has mostly stayed away from love stories—he tends to find it impossible in his films to recreate situations that even remotely hint at intimacy, his art being so closely monitored by authorities whose conservative religious values disallow any such representation. Through the Olive Trees is the closest…
But let’s not fool ourselves into believing that the original TRON was ever anything more than a curious novelty with some then-groundbreaking special effects. The story of video game designer Flynn (Jeff Bridges) who, while attempting to exact revenge on the software corporation that stole his work, is actually…
There’s a scene about halfway through Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s tepid The Tourist during which an Italian policeman appears to doubt Johnny Depp’s mistaken identity alibi not because it stretches credulity, but because it is so boring. Of course, it wouldn’t be worth mentioning this if it weren’t…
Early critical response to Joel and Ethan Coen’s True Grit, a faithful adaptation of Charles Portis’s western novel, has been mostly positive, yet many mask their praise with trepidation. Critics have rightfully celebrated the film’s technical prowess and classical feel, so most of their skepticism boils down to…
Boxing is a sport dependent on mental strategy, despite what its surface-level brutality suggests. In The Fighter, the physically tough but emotionally stricken welterweight boxer “Irish” Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg) has a simple plan and sticks to it despite all odds. Mickey takes a lot of punches, wearing…
Six years after an extraterrestrial race landed on Earth, a photojournalist is dispatched to Mexico to escort an American heiress back to the States. After they’re robbed, the pair must travel through the so-called Infected Zone to make it back home. That’s pretty much all there is to…
Just as Woody Allen keeps demonstrating a preference for leaving behind a depressing legacy of quantity over quality, that other favorite Great American Director, Clint Eastwood, also seems intent on putting out as many movies as he possibly can before he heads for the hereafter. The strategy paid…
The American dissects the emotional enigmas of those working in two of the oldest professions — assassins and prostitutes, respectively. Its cryptic characters depend on anonymity, and when the cracks of identity start to show and their surface-level resolve begins to erode, death is most certainly around the…
No one’s going to argue that the Nazi propaganda machine, helmed by Joseph Goebbels, didn’t exploit the power of the filmed image. Case in point, Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will” — the golden mean of ideological manipulation. And in the shadow of Riefenstahl’s work lie thousands of…
Isolation is a universal theme, but it can also describe an intrinsically American experience of teenage angst. This contextual difference firmly separates Let the Right One In, Tomas Alfredson’s brooding Swedish vampire film, and Let Me In, Matt Reeves’s stirring but ultimately problematic remake. Even though both films…
Self-seriousness can mortally wound the work of a pulp filmmaker who depends on his flashy style. In the case of British director Neil Marshall, obvious political and moral posturing has begun to replace genuine thrills and excitement. From the hilariously absurd werewolves vs. commandos romp Dog Soldiers, to…
It’s a commonly held misconception that the exploitation cinema of the 1970s and early ’80s was “cheesy,” constituting unintentionally funny, poorly made trash notable only for gratuitous violence and sex. Certainly a great many films of the time fit that description neatly, but so would many made today.…
Though made in 2010, Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables has more in common with action pictures of days gone by. That’s not to say that the film is marooned in the late ’80s, and Stallone seems aware of how far removed the days of Rambo and Commando are from…
Female cinematic incarnations have long played second fiddle to subjective male visions of lust, intoxication, and regret, collectively narrow interpretations that often disavow a woman’s perspective altogether. Arzner, Lupino, Varda, Akerman, Breillat, and Campion have tipped the scales closer to equality, but the terrible fact remains that movies…
Edgar Wright is a man at home in pop culture. Despite a winking self-awareness of the tropes that drive their genres, his first two feature films (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) evidence an appreciation and understanding of their forms that goes far beyond snide post-modern irony.…
Some fathers are born, some are made, and some were never meant to be. Jorge Machado, a Mayan fisherman, was evidently born to be a father—every motion and facial tick suggests as much under the proving stare of Pedro González-Rubio’s lens. Alamar (aka To the Sea) is a…
Most of us are loathe to admit it, but the job of a film critic is, more often than not, that of a glorified publicist. The best among us aspire to more—to enlightenment, to intellectual engagement, to the communication of everything this oh-so-young artistic medium is capable of…
Even at the ripe old age of 88, Alain Resnais’s filmmaking engine seems to have an endless supply of creative fuel left. Like clockwork, Resnais churns out a film every four years or so and if his latest offering is any indication, the auteur hasn’t lost the diabolical…
Most films never expand past their 16:9 rectangular tombs, passively projecting until they inevitably fade to black. But a film like I Am Love transcends these boundaries and exists beyond the screen. Luca Guadagnino’s epic melodrama shifts and squirms, pushes and pulls like an organism demanding evolution, challenging…
It’s an ironic kind of blessing when the tag “Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films present” is appended to a film’s opening titles. You know to brace yourself on seeing it. The casual moviegoer can step outside — forewarned is forearmed — but the reviewer can’t do…