French comedic genius Jacques Tati left the world less than a dozen completed films. If Sylvain Chomets THE ILLUSIONIST did nothing but bring us one more Tati film rife with Tatis gift for gentle, perceptive humor, it would be enough of a recommendation. Using a script written by Tati, but unproduced at the time of… Read More »
HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER, THE
Eran Riklis has a talent, as exemplified in the pitch perfect LEMON TREE, for acutely laying bare the absurdity of non-human entities getting in the way of peoples ability to get on with their lives. In THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER, its more than the government, or rather governments, that is wreaking havoc, its a corporation… Read More »
LARRY CROWNE
Somewhere in LARRY CROWNE, there is a darker, more robust film lurking. Fortunately, with director and co-writer Tom Hanks in the title role, rather than hopeless piffle, this lightweight bit of escapism almost takes on the grander trappings of an optimistic fable for our times. A slight one, to be sure, and certainly not one… Read More »
ONE DAY
ONE DAY is an unconventional love story told in an unconventional style. The conceit of dropping in on them once a year on St. Swithins Day (July 15) to check their rocky progression from the 1980s through to the 21st century is as arch and penetrating as it is effective in stripping the story of… Read More »
LITTLEROCK
The serendipity at work in LITTLEROCK is of a profoundly subtle nature. And like the title itself, which refers to a dusty backwash in California rather than the capital of Arkansas, things are never quite what they seem. Expectations are subverted, assumptions exploded, and the meaningless nature of words is replaced by the importance of… Read More »
I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT
Chick-flicks, like the chick-lit on which some of them are based, are like comfort food. Not necessarily good from a nutritional standpoint, but soothing, predictable, and offering nothing challenging. The plot arcs will follow the accepted formula: cutesy and funny, before moving on to the inevitable conflicts, think of it as the crunchy topping on… Read More »
3
3 is a German variation on the classic French bedroom farce. As such, in addition to the leaping from metaphorical bed to metaphorical bed with all the attendant cross-purposes and miscommunications, there are also robust and tantalizing morsels of semiotics, synchronicity, existential identity, with a romantic spirit at work that not only invokes, but also… Read More »
THE RUM DIARY
THE RUM DIARY is suffused with the warm glow of star Johnny Depps deep and abiding affection for Hunter S. Thompson, the writer of the book on which the film is based, and the model for its protagonist, Kemp, played by Depp himself. Its Depps second time playing Thompson, the first being in Terry Gilliams… Read More »
GOON
GOON is an astute and winning character study that subverts and short-circuits conventional expectations. Seann William Scott plays Doug Glatt, the eponymous goon, that member hockey team members tasked with taking out opponents with brutal directness, who goes from fan to fame by a fluke. That the incident that precipitates the fluke arises because of… Read More »
10 YEARS
There is nothing unexpected in 10 YEARS, a tale of the eponymous high school reunion. Instead the emphasis is squarely on the similarly unsurprising cross-section of high school types, which is a risky proposition but one that pays off with a superior cast allowed to do what they each do best, and with writing that… Read More »
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