CAPTAIN FANTASTIC opens with a deer hunt. It’s graphic. It’s violent. Yet there is something about it that shows enormous respect for the animal, and for the young man who brings it down using only a knife. This is not sport, it’s food. That sequence was the first thing I brought up on July 7,… Read More »
LEN AND COMPANY
The eponymous Len, of LEN AND COMPANY is Len Black (Rhys Ifans), a successful record producer and towering failure of a human being, who has absented himself from the world in order the ponder the detritus of his life. He longs for silence, or at least no music of any kind in his rustic upstate… Read More »
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL is a film that plays with its audience’s sense of normality. Beginning in the conventional and slowly, almost imperceptibly, moving us from the quotidian drama of a kidnapped child and a father’s unconditional love, into a boldly unconventional consideration of that elusive point where science and spirituality merge. There is nothing predictable here,… Read More »
KUNG FU PANDA 3
One of the things that makes Po, the eponymous hero of the animated Kung Fu Panda franchise, so endearing is that he doesn’t take his skills in stride. As voiced once again by the excitable gravel that is Jack Black’s speaking instrument, Po takes a childlike delight in being able to defy gravity and dispatch… Read More »
Demian Bichir and Chris Weitz make A BETTER LIFE
When I spoke with Chris Weitz and Demian Bichir on November 1, 2011 about A BETTER LIFE, there was already a buzz about Bichir’s performance as an undocumented worker dreaming of a better life in the United States. It was also the second round of press tours for the duo, and that was the first… Read More »
THE TRANSPORTER: (not) REFUELED
A few years ago I interview Patton Oswalt for YOUNG ADULT, and during the chat I asked him to expand on something that he had said with which I totally agreed: Jason Statham makes any movie better. (Click here for the interview and my mini-rant about how unfair it was that Oswalt didn’t get an… Read More »
NED RIFLE Completes the Cycle
Hal Hartley is the master of astringent whimsy and scathingly erudite satire. No better examples of his talents are to be found than HENRY FOOL (1997) and its follow-up, FAY GRIM (2007). Both deal with a character, Henry (Robert John Burke), who may or may not be the devil inserting himself into the desperately dull… Read More »
LEGION
LEGION is an incoherent flick positing, amid all the apocalyptic mayhem, that the Almighty is out of touch with His/Her inner Deity. It may be a juicy mystery that passeth all understanding to make theologians quiver with the delight of unraveling it, but as a premise for a movie, it’s incoherent. That it also attempts… Read More »
CHICKEN LITTLE
CHICKEN LITTLE begins with a narrator struggling to come up with a way to get things started. This, we are told, is not your usual sort of animated kid’s film, and so none of the usual openings, say leafing through a storybook, will do. And the wonderful part of that is that it doesn’t begin… Read More »
CHICKEN LITTLE — DVD
The treat of having CHICKEN LITTLE on DVD is that it can be on call anytime the need arises for an egg-centric story featuring such endlessly fascinating characters as Fish Out of Water. It manages to be whimsical and sweet without sacrificing wit, not to mention a few on-target swipes at over-budgeted films that are… Read More »