Woody Allen is at his best when he identifies a universal truth of love. In Annie Hall, it was the inevitability of separation. In Midnight in Paris, it was the desperate, idealistic longing for a time that never was. It’s because of this that Café Society never quite stumbles despite its meandering, clumsily delivered story. Cut through the fat and you’ll […]
London Film Festival 2015: The Lobster
“If you were an animal, what animal would you be?” Whether it’s the whirling infantile mind or the daydreams of a bored office worker, this thought holds a primitive interest. Clearly it’s been on Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ mind. The Lobster places us in a world where relationships are so important that those who haven’t found […]
Queen of Earth
2015 is turning out to be the year of the 70s throwback. Between the old-school scares and menacing zooms of It Follows and Magic Mike XXL’s offbeat narrative and warm but dim lighting, Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth comes to us at the ideal moment. And like those two films, Queen of Earth aspires […]
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them
Heartache has never looked so beautiful. Ned Benson makes his filmmaking debut with an audacious splash, releasing The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby as not one film, but three. The writer-director debuted two other versions of the movie, subtitled Him and Her (told from the male and female protagonist’s perspectives, respectively), at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. The Weinstein Company […]
Magic in the Moonlight
Amidst his sardonic ramblings, protagonist Stanley (Colin Firth) proudly exclaims, “When the heart rules the head, disaster follows.” What an apt description of Magic in the Moonlight. Woody Allen’s latest is a study in inauthenticity. Stanley is a white man whose job it is to convince audiences he is an Asian mystic. In his spare time, he travels the […]
Obvious Child
I tried stand-up comedy once. I wasn’t very good at it. But as any successful comic will tell you, this is how everyone’s first, second, and hundredth attempts at stand-up go. Some have even gone so far as to call stand-up one of the world’s hardest professions. Still, the whole process terrified me. After that first […]
Warm Bodies
Warm Bodies shares a lot in common with last year’s Chronicle, a film I really enjoyed. Like Josh Trank’s debut, warm Bodies is a film with surprisingly large scale that somehow managed to slip under the radar of most film buffs and journalists; I had heard nothing about it until a trailer was released, and it […]
Cloud Atlas
After seeing Cloud Atlas, I completely understood why it received such mixed reviews from critics. From the moment the film opens, it is immediately apparent that it is no ordinary Hollywood story. But does the risk of “uniqueness” make or break the film? Personally, I believe it was a brilliant choice. I can definitely say audiences […]
The Amazing Spider-Man
It has been a long, long decade since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man debuted in 2002. The comic book film universe has been on a roller coaster of highs and lows, producing everything from drivel like Ang Lee’s Hulk and Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand to blockbuster hits like Jon Favreau’s Iron Man and Christopher Nolan’s […]
To Rome with Love
Coming off of his fourth Academy Award for the wonderful Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen attempts once again to catch that European lightning in a bottle with To Rome with Love. Unfortunately for him, comparisons to his last film are inevitable, making the fact that To Rome doesn’t measure up to the quality of the writing, story, dialogue, or […]
Moonrise Kingdom
Wes Anderson has a special place in my heart. Back in 2007, during one of the many times my mother sat me down to watch some obscure film she’d heard about, she popped in a film that sounded incredibly drab to my younger self entitled The Darjeeling Limited. To my surprise, ninety-one minutes later, a broad smile had crept […]
Another Earth
On paper, Brit Marling’s Another Earth has an intriguing premise revolving around the possibility of another Earth-like planet suddenly appearing in our sky. This planet is easily within communication distance to our own home world, and the possibilities for a high-concept, low-budget sci-fi film seem endless. Sadly, the film merely implies a lot of squandered potential, a […]
Monsters
Writer/director Gareth Edwards made a big splash in 2010 when he released his first feature-length film Monsters, which he reportedly made for a paltry $500,000. Working with a crew of just seven people that traveled by van around across five countries in only three weeks, Edwards had high ambitions – his mission was to create an authentic romantic […]
The Artist
At this point, you’ve probably heard that The Artist is a beautifully conceived tribute to the era of silent filmmaking – but I would like to reiterate this fact because of how well writer/director Michael Hazanavicius pulled off this feat. Dealing with emotional themes like failure, change, loss, and growth, the period setting of The Artist allows for […]
