I love a film set in the same San Francisco that I inhabit. Nothing against the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, or Alcatraz, but I spend most of my time in places like Green Apple Books. It’s yet another reason that I was bowled over by Dave Boyle’s enchanting neo-Noir, MAN FROM RENO. Boyle is… Read More »
Avoid THE LOFT
The true test of a mystery is if, after the mechanics of the misdirection are revealed, those mechanics are as impressive as the misdirection itself. In THE LOFT, this is indubitably the case. Fiendishly clever, it keeps us off-balance with such finesse what we are unaware that our balance has been impaired, and, when we… Read More »
A MOST VIOLENT YEAR for Oscar Isaac
Sometimes in an interview there’s a defining line. And in talking to Oscar Isaac about JC Chandor’s A MOST VIOLENT YEAR on December 5, 2014, it came towards the end our conversation, when I had asked what I called the “obligatory Star Wars question”. As Isaac was describing his method for getting into character as an… Read More »
A MOST VIOLENT YEAR Is A Most Excellent Film
A MOST VIOLENT YEAR begins, appropriately enough, with its protagonist, Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) running. Though this is merely jogging through the snowy landscape of 1981 New York, he will spend the rest of the film running more purposefully either literally, figuratively, or both, as he scrambles to overcome fate and the fickleness of human… Read More »
SPIDER
David Cronenberg’s particular genius is getting inside our deepest, most primal fears, the ones that exist in the id and are impervious to any assuaging from the land of logic. Hence in RABID, Marilyn Chambers grows something suspiciously phallic in a most unexpected place, in VIDEODROME, our televisions turn on us, and in DEAD RINGERS,… Read More »
HOLES
There is an attitude among some filmmakers that children’s films should be anything but sophisticated, rather, they should be simple in theme and execution and excruciating for anyone over the age of five. Not just the flicks for little kids, either, as evidenced by such recent mush as WHAT A GIRL WANTS. And for those… Read More »
CRIMINAL
Greed makes the world go around, at least it does in the seedy world of CRIMINAL. This re-make of the Argentinian film, NINE QUEENS, has been re-imagined by writer/director Gregory Jacobs as a quirky daylight noir with a plot that spins on a dime as its twists and turns on its way to proving that it’s… Read More »
BRICK
There is in seeing Rian Johnson’s neo-noir, BRICK, the sense that this is not just a startlingly original, wholly engrossing, and brilliantly plotted piece of work. There is the sense that it is nothing less than a flawless masterpiece made all the more remarkable for being Johnson’s maiden cinematic effort. The idioms of the noir… Read More »
EASTERN PROMISES
EASTERN PROMISES is a gloriously dark and compelling thriller that plays cat and mouse with its audience the way that the characters involved play cat and mouse with each other. The tension, though, in this well-plotted suspense yarn arises not so much from the evil that the villains purvey, it’s the way that the underworld… Read More »
FLAWLESS
FLAWLESS is a classy, smart, and fiendishly sly piece of filmmaking that keeps the audience on the edge of its seat. There are herrings aplenty here, red and other, courtesy of writer Edward Andersen, who has a knack for subverting audience expectations by neatly playing into them. Cool and crisp direction by Michael Radford takes… Read More »