Noi, the eponymous hero of NOI ALBINOI (Tomas Lemarquis), is a pale guy in a pale country. Hes more than pale, really, hes an albino and the country is Iceland in winter. A small town in northern Iceland in winter, actually. He lives with his grandmother, who is sweet enough, but seems to be in… Read More »
THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW
THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW understands that its premise, a cataclysmic climate change that happens in less than a week, is hard for even the most sympathetic audience to swallow. It thoughtfully has its characters mentioning that its all very odd and to be suitably surprised by it all. Given that expositional permission, the audience is… Read More »
FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS, THE (De Fem benspænd)
Lars von Triers, the infuriating Danish enfant terrible of film, has long been obsessed with 1967s THE PERFECT HUMAN, an experimental film from Jorgen Leth. Because von Triers is now in a position to act on his obsessions, and because he is, as you might have noticed from BREAKING THE WAVES and DOGVILLE, a perverse… Read More »
STANDER
There is a scene in STANDER that stands out among many such memorable ones. In it, a teller is introduced to Andre Stander (Tom Jane) the police officer who is in charge of finding the man who robbed the bank window she was minding. The thing is, Stander is also the man who made away… Read More »
DOPPELGANGER (Dopperugenga) DVD
DOPPELGANGER is one of those deliciously off-beat films that, barring a name filmmaker or star, have an annoying tendency to fly under the radar of most film lovers. It starts out as an interesting, if somewhat formulaic horror tale about a scientist (Koji Yakusho) who may or may not be going insane after his assistant… Read More »
ONG-BAK: THE THAI WARRIOR
ONG BAK: THE THAI WARRIOR has several things going for it that make it a worthy addition to the martial arts oeuvre. There is the particular style spotlighted, Muay Thai, a variation that involves the use of knees and elbows to drive home the action with an intriuguing kind of violence. Mostly, though, there is… Read More »
HIGH TENSION (HAUTE TENSION)
After seeing HIGH TENSION, I can only think that the French have not had the exposure to Hollywood slasher films that we here in the United States have enjoyed. Why else would writers Gregory Levasseur and Alexandre Aja, who also directed, subject their audience to every one of the genres clichés from PSYCHO to Freddie?… Read More »
11:14
A hit and run, a drop and run, and a severed penis are just part of a very bad night in the usually quiet little town of Middleton. It’s a place where the sidewalks roll up at 9pm, but tonight there’s plenty of mischief afoot, all of it converging, for better or worse, at the… Read More »
MATRIX RELOADED, THE
As with all reviews of sequels, the first thing to get out of the way is how well this installment stands on its own. Answer, not at all. If you havent seen THE MATRIX, good luck making sense of whats going on. It wouldnt hurt to have seen the animation, LAST FLIGHT OF THE OSIRIS,… Read More »
X-MEN 2
Alas it is all too true that for the most part when it comes to filmed entertainment, we are forced to choose between spectacle and story. Think, for example, of the gulf between STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES and THE PIANIST. X-MEN 2 presents us with a third option. First-rate and imaginative special effects… Read More »