War Won’t Tear Us Apart
In A Very Long Engagement, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s fervid need to turn everything into fussy, over-processed whimsy is wholly incongruous with its primary subject: war.
Reviews
Anthropomorphic Widescreen
March of the Penguins, the surprise summer hit, is often awe-inspiring in its content and stunningly beautiful in its visuals, but it’s also a big fucking cheat.
Tagged: Documentaries, March of the Penguins, Nature, Reviews
The King(dom) of Comedy
The ever-divisive Lars von Trier is not known as a storyteller, and that’s the main reason his miniseries The Kingdom – which was released on DVD in November – is so surprising.
Fear Is Blind
Afraid of the Dark, Mark Peploe’s smart but minor psychological thriller, comprises two movies. One of these stories represents reality, and one is fantasy, and it takes no genius to figure out which is which. Thankfully, the film doesn’t try to fool the audience.
Tagged: Afraid of the Dark, Mark Peploe, Reviews, Thrillers
There’s a Hole in the Goblet, Mike Newell, Mike Newell
Harry Potter in Goblet of Fire is stymied by a movie that makes him more pawn than active participant, a film so concerned with barrelling through its sprawling plot that it never finds any rhythm, resonance, or even genuine conflict.
The Evil That Men Do
As an agnostic, the conclusion of Paul Schraeder’s Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist was deeply unsatisfying. Evil is unleashed on an eastern African town, and it is expelled by the power of … God? You might reasonably ask: What the hell did you expect, asshole? It’s a fair question, but it’s not quite that simple.
You Lost Me at “Gosh!”
I was willing to go with Jared Hess’ Napoleon Dynamite up until the very first exclamation of “Gosh!”
Tagged: Comedies, Jared Hess, Napoleon Dynamite, Reviews
Show of Commerce, Show of Art
For a series whose mystery and suspense are central to its allure, Lost’s ploy of eating up airtime minutes with background that is seemingly irrelevant to the central plot is positively brilliant. When you don’t need to move the story forward for a couple handfuls of your weekly forty-odd minutes, it makes it a lot easier to sustain the series over a longer period of time. And here’s the shocking thing: The backstory structure is an artistic triumph, a skeleton that gives the series its distinctive shape, depth, and resonance.
Tagged: Lost, Reviews, Television
Let’s Do the Time Warp Again
The no-budget Primer is an austere rumination on something fantastic, rooted so deeply in the mundane that it seems plausible. Beyond that, it exists in a genre usually loaded with effects shots and races against the clock; it’s Back to the Future taken seriously.
Tagged: Indies, Primer, Reviews, Science Fiction, Shane Carruth
A Circle of Loss
Spider Forest is at once lovely and brutal, delicate and hard, sympathetic and unforgiving. It has a feel both foreign and familiar, like the image in the movie of a girl whose body rises into the air feet-first, as if God’s hand gently plucked her by the ankle and took her into the heavens.
Tagged: Dramas, Foreign-Language Films, Horror, Reviews, Song Il-gon, Spider Forest
