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CHINATOWN
Roman Polanski 1974
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That Chinatown actually got made is a minor Hollywood miracle.
The script from Robert Towne was unshootable.
Roman Polanski was still not over the Sharon Tate murder.
The first meeting between Towne and Polanski did not go well - the Pole tore the script to pieces and Towne, understandably, got depressed.
The producer, Robert Evans, described by Towne as an "idiot savant" was under the thrall of Jack Nicholson and would do whatever he said. Jack believed that Towne could deliver.
In the end it all worked out, but it was one of those 70's Hollywood things that could just as easily evaporated in a cloud of coke. They did things differently... |
| Review by Simon Britton ~ 07|Aug|2008 |
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MONGOL
Sergei Bodrov
2007
Genghis Kahn, sensitive 12th Century tyrant.
Try picking your own wife at the age of ten against your father's wishes. Try commanding the god of thunder. Try communing with wolves. Try trapping and eating live pigeons while imprisoned in a Tibetan dungeon. And as an encore, try uniting a lawless nation of marauding tribesman into a fighting force that would sweep across most of Europe.
According to Mongol, a film which sets out to prove that Kahn is perhaps not the man we thought he was, he did it all. But we never really find out why and how. Perhaps that will be in the next two parts of this trilogy. What we do find out was that he was totally besotted with his child bride and stuck with her through all his travails. And who wouldn't – she looks gorgeous in a sable-skin coat, gently fanned by a spring breeze off the mighty Steppes. In fact, there is a lot of fur-ruffling in this visually splendid Russian production.
The film has the feel of a Western, but from the Indian's POV. Posses of horsemen (and some camel-men) grappling across spectacular vistas, pillaging and plundering at will, only to be chased off by another, bigger, and more ferociously furred band of plunderers appearing ominously over the top of a hill. But our hero is driven by the love of his gorgeously furry wife and it is this obsession that drives him on.
Mongol is an absorbing and complex film with just enough touches of humour and irony to make the movement towards the next (even bigger and gorier) battle scene tolerable.
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| Review by Simon Britton ~ 04|Aug|2008 |
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NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD
Mark Hartley
2008
The tone of Not Quite Hollywood is beautifully wry. The commentary from actors, directors, writers and critics ranges from breathless paeans (Quentin Tarantino) to total opprobrium (Bob Ellis). The survivors of the era are a mongrel lot and they know it. A bunch of unsuspecting second-string American and English actors who were lured down under to make a buck, or to resurrect a flagging career (George Lazenby, Dennis Hopper, David Hemmings, Jamie-Lee Curtis), share some impressions of the what it was like on a mid-70s film set. Dennis Hopper's recollection of his performance on Mad Dog Morgan is vividly hazy, complemented by director Philippe Mora's hilarious account (including actual footage) of Hopper's bizarre method acting. This segment alone is worth the price of admission.
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| Review by Simon Britton ~ 25|Jul|2008 |
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HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY
Guillermo del Toro
2008
Guillermo del Toro’s mind would be a terrifying place to spend an evening. Once again dozens of fantastical monsters have spilled out of his imagination and onto the screen. While Hellboy II: The Golden Army matches the creativity and humor of its predecessor, it also features tighter plotting, a few new supporting characters, and, of course, more trolls, goblins, and elves than you can shake a stick at. Ron Perlman reprises his role as Hellboy with even more surly charm than before. Unfortunately, the film's style often outpaces its substance, but when a film is this pretty it's easy to overlook a few thinly sketched characters and broadly painted themes. If nothing else, ten minutes in the troll market will make you giddy with anticipation for del Toro’s take on The Hobbit. Better start the queue: 2011 is just around the corner.
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| Review by Matt Milner ~ 21|Jul|2008 |
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THE DARK KNIGHT
Christopher Nolan
2008
If 2005's Batman Begins radically redefined its titular superhero, The Dark Knight explodes the entire superhero genre. As a popcorn blockbuster, The Dark Knight is filled with enough thrilling chases, bone crunching fights, and blistering explosions to keep you enthralled. The film's real triumph, however, is the extent to which it twists and subverts the conventions of the Hollywood blockbuster. Don't let the PG-13 rating mislead you: this is one of the darkest and most disturbing films to role into the multiplex in quite some time. Heath Ledger's Joker seemed to enter the canon of historic movie villains shortly after the actor's untimely passing, but the cacophonous hype was (for once) completely justified. While a posthumous Oscar nomination seems a lock for Ledger, the entire ensemble turns in a remarkable set of performances. If you can stomach the intensity, then you’ll surely be blown away by this towering achievement.
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| Review by Matt Milner ~ 18|Jul|2008 |
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WALL-E
Andrew Stanton
2008
The most frequent comparisons that the character WALL-E receives are to the silent movie stars of yore, like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. And while the various robots that populate the film manage to be as charismatic and expressive as those icons based solely on their physical expressions and presence, they are by no means silent. They produce a variety of electronic beeps and trills that simulate speech almost perfectly. This allows for characterization that would otherwise be impossible, and as a result WALL-E is destined to become one of the most indelible screen characters in history. As a whole, WALL-E is virtually flawless. Issues could certainly be raised about the latter half of the movie (the first half is beyond reproach), but that would be searching for something to criticize simply for the sake of doing so. The movie is charming, funny and touching, everything you could ask for.
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| Review by Ben Murphy ~ 10|Jul|2008 |
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KUNG FU PANDA
Mark Osborne & John Stevenson
2008
If you’ve seen the trailer for Kung Fu Panda, you’ve seen Kung Fu Panda. The few good jokes in the movie are there, as are some of the razzle-dazzle-this-is-animated-so-we-can-do-anything martial arts sequences. Po (voiced by Jack Black), is a fat and hungry panda who is nonetheless gifted when it comes to kung fu. No one believes in him because he’s, well, a fat panda. But he perseveres! (Delicious-looking animated dumplings are involved for encouragement and reward.) This film brings to mind Disney's Mulan, also set in a China full of talking animals and mystical forces, except Mulan was all about girl power and confronting a variety of injustices, with lots of truly funny scenes, and Kung Fu Panda is about a fat panda, the word "skadoosh", and a star-studded cast (including Angelina Jolie and Dustin Hoffman) —not exactly inspiring.
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| Review by Kristina Chiappetta ~ 08|Jul|2008 |
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MY WINNIPEG
Guy Maddin
2008
Anyone who has ever had a hometown that they feel inexplicably, devotedly tethered to will appreciate Guy Maddin’s experiment: a dreamlike, part-melodrama, pseudo-documentary. In My Winnipeg, the lines between reality and fiction are blurred as Maddin takes us on a lethargic and quixotic exploration of his native city. Maddin writes poetry with his black-and-white moving images and the result is an 80-minute sensory impression. I watched My Winnipeg in sort of a trance, fueled by Maddin’s constant, repetitive narration and the repeated images of "Winterpeg". Maddin tells his life story, weaving in tidbits and trivia from the bizarre and questionable history of Winnipeg. Truth or not, this history of sorts works, painting a beautifully personal portrait of the childhood that Maddin cannot escape. I have never felt so fully transported to a completely foreign locale while watching a film; Maddin makes his Winnipeg our Winnipeg.
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| Review by Kristina Chiappetta ~ 07|Jul|2008 |
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WANTED
Timur Bekmambetov
2008
Overstuffed and inane, this movie would beg for a bad review if it took itself seriously. But thankfully it does not, and what could have been an embarrassing two hours for all involved turns out to be a surprisingly entertaining survey of every action movie cliché imaginable. There's the secret fraternity of killers, whose origins are never really explained, and the hapless loser-turned-action hero whose talent for "curving" bullets is also never explained. And then there's the pièce de résistance: a magical loom that tells everyone who to kill. Who tells the loom what to weave, how it knows binary code, or why anyone feels compelled to listen to it, are also - you guessed it - not explained. But these would be plot points, and this movie does not concern itself with plot, so if you don't either, you're in for a great ride.
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| Review by Juan Castillo ~ 07|Jul|2008 |
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THE EDGE OF HEAVEN
Fatih Akin
2007
Fatih Akin’s latest dramatic gem is a contemplative piece that fills the viewer alternately with dread and hope. The dread comes from inter-titles that cut the film into three sections; two of these reveal the impending death of a main character. The hope comes after they die, when still-living loved ones begin to more fully understand themselves and each other. The characters in The Edge of Heaven consist mainly of three parent-child sets that become estranged and then re-connect in often-surprising ways. The film highlights the cruel irony of life; lost in randomness, people seem to have little control—until the irony turns in their favor. The Edge of Heaven isn’t as abrasive as Akin’s Head-On (2004), which also garnered critical acclaim. Instead, it is a quiet, steady, and visually striking exploration of human connections along the journey to the edge of whatever this life is.
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| Review by Kristina Chiappetta ~ 30|Jun|2008 |
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BROTHER'S KEEPER
Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky
1992
Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's documentary about a controversial death in a rural farming community in upstate New York is documentary filmmaking at its best. William Ward, a farmer living in a one-room shack with his three illiterate brothers, is found dead one morning in the bed he had shared with his brother Delbert for his entire life. The film follows the brothers (whose only previous contact with the outside world was through what they could pick up on their tiny black and white television) as they react to the allegations of murder and the media frenzy that surrounded Delbert's trial. The cinematography is beautiful, the editing is flawless (and often times quite humorous), and the sympathetic Ward brothers are utterly captivating to watch. By the end of the film you find yourself in awe of a town that time forgot and its residents that wouldn't have it any other way.
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| Review by Catherine Wernquest ~ 26|Jun|2008 |
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GET SMART
Peter Segal
2008
I enjoy silly things like Bill Murray having a conversation with Steve Carell from inside a tree. I enjoyed Get Smart. The movie (based on the 60s television show) about a slightly inept spy stars Carell as Maxwell Smart and Anne Hathaway as the lovely Agent 99, and is full of ridiculous gags that left me occasionally puzzled but mostly enthused. Although the occasional joke falls flat, the talent of the cast makes up for it (Alan Arkin is also on the bill, as is the ever-impressive... Dwayne Johnson). The plot is fairly intricate, though thankfully not overly confusing, as is often the case in the spy genre. And, also thankfully, the filmmakers aren't taking themselves very seriously. The movie moseys along leisurely, mixing bits of real suspense (the main duo fights and free-falls at 30,000 feet) with expertly performed physical comedy (Carell mini-harpoons himself—repeatedly and hilariously).
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| Review by Kristina Chiappetta ~ 23|Jun|2008 |
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THE HAPPENING
M. Night Shyamalan
2008
Billed as Shyamalan's first R-Rated movie, The Happening is filled with scenes of senseless gore as people are driven to kill themselves in a variety of graphic ways (I won't tell you why because you'd be laughing too hard to finish reading the rest of this review). Even more senseless than the violence, however, is the script itself. Because Shyamalan has such a knack for inducing suspense through the framing of his shots, the film is entirely awkward to watch as beautifully framed, suspenseful scenes appear on screen coupled with utterly appaling performances of a flimsy, and at times, laughable script (at one point Mark Wahlberg seriously pleads with a rubber plant for his life). Do yourself a favor and skip this movie unless you want to experience the longest 91 minutes of your life.
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| Review by Catherine Wernquest ~ 17|Jun|2008 |
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ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD
Werner Herzog
2007
Werner Herzog's latest documentary is, in a word, awesome. Narrated by the thoughtful and humorous director himself, the film tells the unique stories of a variety of people living in Antarctica, while often showcasing current scientific developments and the natural beauty of the continent. The imagery is consistently breathtaking, whether on the edge of a volcano or in the depths of the sea. There are moments of humor, moments of eccentricity, and moments of tenderness that occasionally fold into each other (a "deranged" penguin mistakenly travels not toward the sea, nor toward his home colony, but straight out toward the mountains, hundreds of miles away). The audience at first laughs at this confused animal, but is hushed when Herzog comments that it is on the path toward certain death (as are we, the narration suggests). Herzog’s latest film is truly entertaining and visually stunning; it offers an idiosyncratic insight into the human psyche.
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| Review by Kristina Chiappetta ~ 17|Jun|2008 |
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CONTROL
Anton Corbijn
2007
Control tells the story of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, who killed himself at 23 as the band reached its artistic and commercial peak. In a refreshing departure from the conventions of rock biopics (I’m Not There, for instance), Anton Corbijn’s debut feature neither asserts that Curtis was the most incredibly special creative genius who ever lived nor that Joy Division was the most important artistic force of its time. As a photographer, Corbijn helped forge Joy Division’s gothic image, and he perfectly captures the post-industrial gloom of the band’s native Manchester. Sam Riley puts on one of the best performances of 2007 as Curtis. The cast actually performed the music in the film, and it’s shockingly good. My only objection to the film is that it fails to capture exactly how Curtis harnessed his depression and transformed it into some of the most innovative popular music ever recorded.
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| Review by Rob Wohl ~ 17|Jun|2008 |
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BOMB IT
Jon Reiss
2008
Jon Reiss' global graffiti documentary hard hits a vital contemporary nerve. Where is the public space? Who owns it? And why do advertisers have the right to control our visual landscape with images that are often vulgar and disturbing? A consumer culture (that we all very readily accept) tells us that money buys these rights of control and access. Bomb It challenges this. The film suggests that there is nothing natural, neutral, or normal about this relationship. I'm not saying this is a Socialist film; it's a beautifully shot and edited documentary that asks us to re-think the borders of public space and art. Interviews with graffiti artists and writers from Los Angeles, New York, Sao Paulo, Paris, Barcelona, London, Capetown, and Tokyo re-situate graffiti outside the prison gates and inside a riveting dialogue about how we as humans negotiate a place for ourselves in controlled environments. Chaz Bojorquez, Cornbread, Revs, Os Gemeos, KRS One, Blek Le Rat, and Shepard Fairey deconstruct commonplace notions that graffiti is thoughtless and ugly and always gang-related. The film gives graffiti back its history and philosophical and social virility as an outsider art movement. The international perspective reveals graffiti culture as something innately human, dating back to the earliest days in caves - a mixed drive to say: "Hello world, I'm here," and to use art as a weapon to fight and express the alienation and ugliness of modern cities.
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| Review by Samantha Skinazi ~ 16|Jun|2008 |
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THE VISITOR
Tom McCarthy
2008
Actor-turned-writer/director Thomas McCarthy follows up his indie semi-smash The Station Agent with yet another tale of unlikely friendships whose title begins with the word "The". This time the story revolves around a Connecticut College professor who finds a couple living in his New York apartment. The woman is from Senegal, the man Syria, and neither are legal residents, a fact that quickly becomes a troublesome truth when the Department of Immigration gets involved. The film loses steam towards the end, but is notable for a revelatory and understated performance by seasoned character actor Richard Jenkins as well as a refreshingly authentic cinematic take on New York City that keys in on street vendors and drum circles.
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| Review by Andrew Gnerre ~ 13|Jun|2008 |
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SAVAGE GRACE
Tom Kalin
2008
Life should be good for Barbara Daly (Julianne Moore) after she marries Brooks Baekeland (Stephen Dillane), the heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune. But their wildly different backgrounds drive a painful schism between them, and events take a turn for the worse as Barbara gives birth to a son, Tony (Eddie Redmayne). Tony becomes increasingly dependent on his mother as he matures, while his father rejects him and deems him a failure. Tony’s fragile mental state approaches a meltdown as the family constantly relocates all over the world. Director Tom Kalin splits the pivotal moments in their lives into six chapters spanning four decades. Savage Grace is based on a true story and features another formidable performance from Moore. The Oedipal nature of Barbara and Tony’s relationship makes for uneasy viewing at times, but this is another noteworthy entry on the resumes of both Moore and Kalin.
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| Review by Nick Neyland ~ 11|Jun|2008 |
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SEX AND THE CITY: THE MOVIE
Michael Patrick King
2008
A week ago, I was a nonbeliever in Sex and the City; I avoided it like the plague and wasn’t sure what to expect when my mother, a lifelong fan of the HBO series, dragged me into a theatre full of women at the multiplex. I was pleasantly surprised by the film, which contains appreciable amounts of wit, style, and sex. By far the most electric lady on screen is Samantha (Kim Cattrall), whose comic timing is impeccable and who at one point covers her naked body in sushi as a Valentine’s Day surprise. Many such gimmicks occur in the film, which spans many months of developments in characters’ lives, resulting (somewhat unfortunately) in an episodic narrative. Regardless, the writers effortlessly wrap up this package of girly squeals, fashion shows, romance, and self-realization, with a less annoying breed of chick flick.
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| Review by Kristina Chiappetta ~ 11|Jun|2008 |
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DIARY OF THE DEAD
George A. Romero
2007
The fourth film in George A. Romero’s Dead series is an innovative addition to his canon. The entire movie is shot from the point of view of a group of film students who learn about a plague of zombies while out shooting a low budget horror film. Young Jason Creed (Joshua Close) leads the group of filmmakers and their college professor as they hit the road to document this ghoulish turn of events. The film is full of increasingly violent deaths, lashings of guts and gore, and inventive uses of social networking sites such as MySpace to share footage of the zombie invasion across the world. The trick of filming the entire movie on cheap digital cameras is a neat way for Romero to deal with the film’s minuscule budget, and the cast of young unknowns does a decent job of creating a palpable sense of terror.
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| Review by Nick Neyland ~ 29|May|2008 |
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