THE INFERNAL MACHINE begins as a spare and tense film driven by Guy Pearce’s measured performance as tormented author Bruce Cogburn. Alas, not even Pearce’s fine work as Cogburn slowly unravels from years of guilt can make up for a script whose third act becomes cryptically obtuse, rather than dynamically charged, before it just goes… Read More »
THE DUNNING MAN — Michael Clayton, Kevin Fortuna, and Ian Blume Interview
The one question I knew I wasn’t going to ask the team behind THE DUNNING MAN was the one about that Oscar™-winning film that shares a name with DUNNING MAN’s director/screenwriter, Michael Clayton. Instead, when I spoke with Clayton, writer Kevin Fortuna, editor Ian Blume by phone on March 6, 2017, I started the conversation by… Read More »
LATTER DAYS
Oh no, it’s another film about a religious good boy moving to the big bad city and discovering that he’s gay. I know, it sounds awful in that we’ve seen this a gazillion times sense, but LATTER DAYS is a cut above the rest for its gentle message about finding the strength to see other… Read More »
GARDEN STATE
Only rarely does a film as profound, as rich, and as deeply affecting as GARDEN STATE come along. Even more rarely is it the handiwork of a first-time filmmaker. That would be Zack Braff, known for his role as the philosophically harried intern on the subversively wicked comedy, Scrubs. Braff is Andrew Largeman, a struggling… Read More »
KINSEY
KINSEY opens with the face of Peter Sarsgaard in close-up looking directly into the camera and asking questions of a sexual nature. An offscreen voice stops him when he uses a euphemism for a sexual act. No, says the voice that we will shortly learn is Kinseys, it wont work unless you are completely straightforward,… Read More »
THE HELP
THE HELP, based on the novel of the same name by Kathryn Stockett, gently but firmly peels away they dry rot of racism that festered beneath the gracious, etiquette obsessed façade of southern gentility before the civil rights movement. What is remarkable, and a remarkably difficult line to walk, is that it does so while… Read More »
Rich Moore Gives WRECK-IT RALPH Serious Depth
Rich Moore spent a healthy part of his youth playing video games, which ultimately paid off when the time came to come up with the story for WRECK-IT RALPH. When I spoke to him on October 17, 2012, the first thing I wanted to know was how he got from video games in general to existential… Read More »
Mitchell Lichtenstein Sharpens His TEETH
If there is any truth to the old saying that any publicity is good publicity, Mitchell Lichtenstein is on to something with his feature film debut, TEETH. The writer/director and erstwhile actor decided to go beyond the metaphor of the vagina dentata, and deal directly with that myth, the one that has haunted men though… Read More »
Tony Gilroy Pulls the Strings on MICHAEL CLAYTON
Tony Gilroy is no stranger to the inner workings of law firms. He researched how things operated while writing the screenplay for THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE, but with MICHAEL CLAYTON, which marks his directorial debut, he kept things strictly out of the supernatural realm while still exploring the evil at work in the world. When we… Read More »
Marjane Satrapi Creates PERSEPOLIS
When I talked with Marjane Satrapi on December 12, 2007, the national news was full of the latest example of gun violence in the United States. Before getting down to talking about PERSEPOLIS, based on her autobiographical graphic novel of the same name, she asked me why the pundits were talking about the shooter’s psychology… Read More »