THE WOODSMAN is the bravest film of the year, perhaps of the decade. Emotionally challenging and ferociously unforgiving, it is an astonishing work of surprising delicacy played out with the rawest of emotion simmering just beneath the surface. In telling the story of Walter (Kevin Bacon), a convicted pedophile, it demands that we look beyond… Read More »
HOTEL RWANDA
There is a scene in HOTEL RWANDA where Nick Nolte as a member of a U.N. peacekeeping squad, is explaining with more than a trace of righteous indignation to Don Cheadle, as the Rwandan trying to save 1200 of his fellow citizens from slaughter, exactly why the rest of world is going to sit by… Read More »
LIES (GOJITMAL)
Ah, sadomasochism, the gift that keeps on giving–welts, bruises, tattoos in all sorts of interesting places and that’s the theme of LIES, the latest flick from Jang Sun Woo, up until now one of my favorite directors on the world scene. But, hey, everyone slips up occasionally. For Jang its a particularly joyless coupling of… Read More »
MILLION DOLLAR BABY
MILLION DOLLAR BABY is a perfect film. Director and co-star Clint Eastwood has taken a story about people who live on the margins of life and turned it into a universal story about redemption and respect, and getting them the only way that counts, by being self-administered. The conceit is boxing, which Scrap (Morgan Freeman)… Read More »
BEYOND THE SEA
There is no doubt about it, Kevin Spacey adores Bobby Darin. He spent years pushing to get this biopic, BEYOND THE SEA, about the singer made, directing, starring, and co-writing the finished product. The problem is that Spacey is so wrapped up in his hero worship that the audience is left in the cold. Instead… Read More »
RORY O’SHEA WAS HERE (aka INSIDE I’M DANCING)
RORY OSHEA WAS HERE is an earnest, unpretentious film from Ireland that has the virtue of treating its subject, the disabled and their struggle for dignity and independence, without weepy sentimentality. Beyond a break-out performance by James MacAvoy in the title role, though, it has little to set it apart from the usual disability of… Read More »
LILIES
Some films are dreck, some films are popcorn, some films are art, and some films are pure poetry. LILIES falls into the poetry category. It’s a mystery set simultaneously in the golden past and the gray walls of a maximum-security prison. It takes poetry and filmmaker John Greyson to make that work. The story of madness,… Read More »
RAY — DVD
Taylor Hackford is not originally from the south, but he has the soul of a southerner when it comes to storytelling. In RAY, he uses it to blend past and present in ways that don’t just show how the former affects the latter, but how in the emotional landscape of the title character, the legendary… Read More »
DOWNFALL (DER UNTERGANG)
The story of DOWNFALL, Hitler?s last days in his Berlin bunker before committing suicide when his Third Reich was at an end has been told before in countless versions. What sets this film apart is the way it incorporates the oral history of Hitler?s secretary, Traudl Junge (played like an innocent lamb to the slaughter… Read More »
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
While Ridley Scott was busy filling THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, his saga of the Crusades, with sweeping vistas of warfare, oceans of soldiers bent on carnage, and forests of siege engines gliding purposefully towards embattled Jerusalem, he forgot to add a story that would engross an audience. Or even work up a ripple in interest.… Read More »
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