It would be easy, and a huge mistake, to dismiss BURIED as a stunt film. Sure, Ryan Reynolds spends the entire 94 minutes of the running time buried underground in a box, but such is the imaginative take on the subject by screenwriter Chris Sparling and director Roderigo Cortes, that the struggle of one confined… Read More »
THE GREY
The best moment, the one that perfectly sums up THE GREY, is the one where a character has decided to die. Not because pain and fatigue suffered by that character have muddled his judgment and clouded his mind, though the actor involved certainly brings that, no, the decision to die is more transcendent than that,… Read More »
GREY, THE
The best moment, the one that perfectly sums up THE GREY, is the one where a character has decided to die. Not because pain and fatigue suffered by that character have muddled his judgment and clouded his mind, though the actor involved certainly brings that, no, the decision to die is more transcendent than that,… Read More »
ALBERT NOBBS
This is how good Glenn Close is as the eponymous ALBERT NOBBS. At one point her character, who has lived as a man for decades in Victorian Ireland, dons a dress for an outing to the beach and it just looks wrong. Close, the epitome of feminine elegance, doesnt clomp around, nor does she become… Read More »
HUNGER GAMES, THE
The politics of THE HUNGER GAMES, based on the hugely popular novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins, are never far from the action. Yet the premise, a futuristic yet oddly familiar society operating after the collapse of the United States, one that keeps its poor and downtrodden firmly under heel by turning them… Read More »
HITCHCOCK
The splendid thing about HITCHCOCK is that it doesn’t just aspire to tell the story behind the making of PSYCHO. No, this wickedly endearing effort takes on the man, and the mythos behind the man, and then, for good measure, the woman behind both that made them legendary. Based on Stephen Rebello’s book, Alfred Hitchcock… Read More »
AT ANY PRICE
The genius of Ramin Bahrani’s AT ANY PRICE is the way it talks about things without actually talking about them. This is a story of cause-and-effect, with the failings of a father reflecting the corruption of the American Dream. Though it takes place in the heartland, on that most homespun and wholesome of enterprises, the… Read More »
GANGSTER NO. 1
GANGSTER NO 1 is a slick and stylish tale of love and revenge set in the 60s Londons gangland scene. In the milieu that brought forth the real-life Kray brothers, known for their ultra-violence, screenwriter Johnny Ferguson brings us Freddy Mayes and his prime lackey, the eponymous gangster Number 1 who is never otherwise named. The film… Read More »
CHESS PLAYER, THE
Connoisseurs of first-rate filmmaking, silent or talking, should drop everything and find Raymond Bernard’s THE CHESS PLAYER. This French classic from 1927 has been newly released on video and DVD by Milestone, purveyor of some of the finest films ever made. The time is 1776 during the Russian occupation of Poland. While that may seem… Read More »
VANITY FAIR
Mira Nair’s telling of Thackery’s classic, VANITY FAIR, is a lush, sprawling, sensual film that totters unevenly under the weight of its own ambition. It’s an apt metaphor considering that its heroine, Becky Sharpe, has the same Achilles Heel. Blithely skipping through so many decades of necessity leads to a feeling of sketchiness in some… Read More »