Friday, January 13 2012
‘America’s Most Hated Family’ Is Still Mad at the World
It's not so much that America's Most Hated Family provides answers or even coherent questions. But it does suggest that words, spoken and heard, might make a difference.
‘Joyful Noise’ Is Not Quite What You’d Expect
Its attention to musical performances, breaking up the melodrama and predictability, sets Joyful Noise apart.
‘Contraband’ Is About One Last Job, Again
Diego Luna plays Gonzalo like a once-hungry gangster gone soft, his belly hanging, his hair scraggling, his arrogance oozing.
Thursday, January 12 2012
‘Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory’: The West Memphis Three Go Free
A hallmark of all three Paradise Lost films has been their understanding and embrace of subjects' self-presentations. As much as the movies have commented on "society," they also contemplate how individuals see themselves.
Wednesday, January 11 2012
‘All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert’: Surviving the South
At once harrowing and heartening, Winfred Rembert's stories are represented in particularly vivid form -- dyed leather canvases.
Tuesday, January 10 2012
‘Mulberry Child’ Looks Back on the Cultural Revolution
Jian's childhood was hard: while Mao's Red Guards were jailing and torturing people, her mother was unable to show her children much affection.
Monday, January 9 2012
‘Norwegian Wood’ Offers Snowy Landscapes and a Narrow Perspective
Norwegian Wood notes in passing that students are protesting, but Watanabe tends to walk past the raucous crowds on the sidewalks as if in a dream.
Friday, January 6 2012
‘The Devil Inside’ Has Nowhere to Go
As Isabella speaks again and again to the camera -- whether in league with Michael or in mid-hysteria -- she repeats the tropes you know too well.
Thursday, January 5 2012
‘Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’ Tells a Tale of Pain, and Men and Women
Throughout the night and the next day, when they do in fact find the body, buried and hogtied, the men reveal their differing ideas about crime -- about bad and good men, and about women.
Wednesday, January 4 2012
‘The Hunter’: Feeling Bleak
If the hunter's motivation is unspoken, harrowing, haunting shots of the woods, the rain, the car speeding along the roadway, show how he feels.
Tuesday, January 3 2012
‘The Darkest Hour’ Stumbles and Bumbles
The Darkest Hour has a flabbergasting lack of stye and suspense.
Friday, December 30 2011
‘The Iron Lady’ Is Historical Mush
Meryl Streep’s performance as Margaret Thatcher is well honed, but it can’t save this doddering, amateurish spectacle.
‘A Separation’ Reveals Multiple Confinements
A Separation leads you to suspect that everyone's stories are confused by hopes and fears, whether conscious or not.
‘El Sicario, Room 164’: A Narco Executioner’s Memories
In El Sicario, Room 164, the self-admitted murderer's face hidden and his hands in motion, the violence is vivid in your mind. Of course, he may be lying.
Wednesday, December 28 2011
‘Pariah’ Showcases Adepero Oduye’s Remarkable Performance
Alike's coming out story is at once too typical and her own, as she makes her way through the movie and through the representational burden she bears.
Friday, December 23 2011
‘War Horse’ Reveals Our Human Instincts
In War Horse, Steven Spielberg riffs on the horrors of World War I, so often supplanted by World War II epics in our collective psyche.
‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ Explains Too Much
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close makes a mighty effort to make the strange familiar and the familiar newly illuminating as well.
‘Pina’: A Language You Can Learn to Read
When you watch bodies in Wim Wenders' Pina, you hear and see them breathing.
Thursday, December 22 2011
‘In the Land of Blood and Honey’ Shows War Made by Individuals
Ajla's confinement and desolation, her powerlessness, stand in for the Muslims' situation in the war, just as Danijel's abuses, his misreadings, and his torment concerning his father's expectations, incarnate the Serbs'.
‘We Bought a Zoo’ Is Not Among Cameron Crowe’s Best
While many PG films use the death of a parent as a story catalyst, by focusing on Benjamin's constant pain, We Bought a Zoo is infused with a malaise that will be hard for younger viewers to absorb.