Category Archives: Reviews

REVIEW: Holy Motors

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Holy Motors
Directed by: Leos Carax
Written by: Leos Carax (screenplay)
Starring: Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Eva Mendes and Kylie Minogue

Leos Carax claims that Holy Motors emerged partly out of his rage not to be able to make all of the films he wanted.  It is not so much about cinema, he said, but that it speaks the language of cinema.  It is a weird, volatile piece of work to be sure, and it pays tribute to various genres while tearing down the conventions that hold them together in the process.

At every twist and turn of Holy Motors’ story we are made aware of the artifice present in the making of any fictional film.  It tells the story of a man named Oscar (Denis Lavant) who over the course of a day rides from appointment to appointment in his white limo and becomes a different character in a different movie at each one.  Weirdly, it has the same storytelling device as its fellow Cannes competitor Cosmopolis, even down to the white limo.

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REVIEW: The Call

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The Call
Directed by: Brad Wilson
Written by: Richard D’Ovidio (screenplay), Richard D’Ovidio, Nicole D’Ovidio & Jon Bokenkamp (story)
Starring: Halle Berry, Abigail Breslin, Morris Chestnut and Michael Eklund

Right before The Call takes a dive into its third act abyss, the main character, a 911 phone operator, is told by her supervisor to go home.  She was just disconnected from a kidnapped teenager (Abigail Breslin), but her job does not allow her to have resolution.  That’s for the officers that respond, and she just gets to see how it unfolds on the news.

Many reviews of this taut, often exceptional thriller have condemned the take-no-prisoners absurdity of the last 20 or so minutes.  Instead of the safe if chaotic confines of the 911 call center, Jordan Turner (Halle Berry and her hair) becomes a sort of vigilante and takes it upon herself to stop the serial killer who she creepily encounters on the other end of the line twice before being disconnected.  The ending is implausible, to be sure, but it turns the movie into a feminist parable, one where neither woman becomes a victim and show no signs of sainthood when they finally do incapacitate the killer (Michael Eklund).

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REVIEW: Spring Breakers

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Spring Break

Spring Breakers
Directed by: Harmony Korine
Written by: Harmony Korine (screenplay)
Starring: Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, James Franco and Selena Gomez

A neon pop nightmare of startling depravity, Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers shows no mercy in its depiction of America as a doomed beach party.  Set in (where else?) Florida during peak Spring Break season, it tells the story of four college friends who wax philosophical on their demented quest for not just a good time, but the good time.  Along the way they meet a rapper/drug dealer named Alien (James Franco) who thinks he’s teaching them the ropes but is ultimately just along for the ride.

What makes Spring Breakers tick is not the countless slow motion shots of jiggling T&A, beer bongs and jock straps, but in the hyper-stylized rhythm that puts them into context.  Despite the club soundtrack and the atmosphere of excess, it feels more like horror party than peep show, though at times Korine is clearly lingering in the bared flesh.  As a whole, though, it is the most cinematically alive movie I’ve seen so far this year.

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REVIEW: The Girl

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The Girl
Directed by: David Riker
Written by: David Riker (screenplay)
Starring: Abbie Cornish, Maritza Santiago Hernandez, Will Patton and Angeles Cruz

There’s a scene in The Girl, David Riker’s ferociously personal film about immigration, that serves as a more scathing and succinct indictment of American policy than almost any news story could.  Ashley (Abbie Cornish) has recently discovered that her border-crossing semi-truck driving father (Will Patton) smuggles in illegal immigrants from Mexico with his legal corporate cargo.  The point of his character is to illustrate how corporations have an easier time crossing the border than people.

The Girl is anchored by a fantastic performance from Cornish, a mother with a son in foster care who turns to smuggling illegal immigrants across the border for extra cash.  She works at a Wal Mart-like megastore and is a recovering alcoholic, but Riker’s handling of her desperation is compassionate.  Most of the screenplay is overtly political and Riker does little formally to mask this, so it can at times feel a little too heavy-handed, but Cornish, Patton and the young newcomer Maritza Santiago Hernandez bring crucial humanity to it.

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BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: Argo

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Argo

Argo
Directed by: Ben Affleck
Written by: Chris Terrio (screenplay), Joshuah Bearman (article)
Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin and John Goodman

I think Argo is going to win Best Picture, if the studios play their marketing cards smartly and don’t push too hard before the end of the year.  This isn’t because it’s the best movie of the year, but it’s the kind of movie that Academy voters can agree on.  It’s very suspenseful, it has a good ensemble cast decked out in ’70s hair and it’s in part about Hollywood helping rescue hostages in Iran.

Ben Affleck has been steadily building up his directing chops in his previous features Gone Baby Gone and The Town, and in leaving contemporary Boston behind here he has created his most assured movie yet.  Argo is consistently engaging, from its washed out ’70s look to its fluid, precisely orchestrated camera movements.  The first 20 minutes, where the U.S. embassy in Iran is stormed by protesters, are brilliantly conceived.

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BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: Lincoln

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Lincoln
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Tony Kushner (screenplay), Doris Kearns Goodwin (book)
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones and David Strathairn

The controversy surrounding Lincoln’s depiction of African Americans has been slightly dwarfed in the wake of Django Unchained.  There was still rampant, endlessly insightful discussion of it in all corners of the internet, but its subdued, melancholy pacing doesn’t place that issue front and center, and it is decidedly less confrontational than Tarantino’s bloody Southern.

After watching Spielberg’s political epic a second time, I came away with a renewed appreciation for the skill with which it was crafted.  Tony Kushner’s flair for language, the astonishing performances by everyone from Daniel Day-Lewis to Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones, the production design- all of these meld to form a focused political thriller that ranks among Spielberg’s finest films.

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BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: Silver Linings Playbook

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SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

Silver Linings Playbook
Directed by: David O. Russell
Written by: David O. Russell (screenplay), Matthew Quick (novel)
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver

Silver Linings Playbook ends on the thrillingly odd culmination of a dance competition and an NFL football game, the result of a high stakes parlay bet between an obsessive compulsive Philadelphia Eagles fan (Robert De Niro) and a rival gambler who favors the Dallas Cowboys (Paul Herman).  It is a fitting conclusion given that the rest of the movie, for all its seeming narrative conformity, is a rampant, lively piece of work that does what it wants, when it wants.

Part of the reason for this is that its two main characters, two damaged, mentally unstable people played by Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, do that as well and director David O. Russell is just trying to keep up with them. It could also be the other way around, though.  Russell has such a lively way with camera movement and atmosphere that the constant sense of motion and organized chaos seems exhausting. For the most part the performers, especially Lawrence, are more than up to the task.  She makes Tiffany such a force of nature that the miscasting of Bradley Cooper is barely noticeable.

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BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: Les Miserables

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reg_1024.10lesmis.ls.12212Les Misérables 
Directed by: Tom Hooper
Written by: William Nicholson (screenplay), Herbert Kretzmer (lyrics), Victor Hugo (novel)
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway and Amanda Seyfried

When I originally saw Les Misérables, I was so disheartened and uninspired  that I didn’t even want to write down any thoughts about it.  Anne Hathaway was great, yes.  At times the raw combination of extended takes done in close-up and live singing from the performers was thrilling.  But the movie was bloated, sloppy and completely overdone.

Having not seen the stage musical or read Victor Hugo’s gargantuan novel, I came to the material with completely fresh eyes.  It begins with a sweeping, artificial-looking descent into a 19th century French work camp, where Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) is completing a 20 year work sentence for stealing a loaf of bread for his family.  He is overseen by Javert (Russell Crowe), a ruthless, incredibly narrow character whose sole pursuit throughout the movie is to show up conveniently at any given scenario where Valjean is present and make him squirm.

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BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: Amour

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Amour 
Directed by: Michael Haneke
Written by: Michael Haneke (screenplay)
Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert and William Shimmell

Michael Haneke’s latest film is a good poster child for why mainstream movie audiences fear and avoid many foreign films; it is quiet, slow and relentlessly depressing.  After winning the Palme d’Or in 2009 for The White Ribbon, Haneke officially established himself as a “Cannes auteur,” a director whose latest work would forever and always have a place in the festival’s cannon.

Amour is wondrously, deliberately hopeless.  Its depiction of an elderly woman’s slow, painful crawl toward death after suffering a series of strokes is not peppered with melodrama or any sort of dramatic flourish.  Haneke seems to think this would make the situation too comfortable, too much like a movie.  The goal of this film is to show the situation in as realistic light as possible, but from a removed distance.

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REVIEW: Compliance

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Compliance
Directed by: Craig Zobel
Written by: Craig Zobel (screenplay)
Starring: Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, Pat Healy and Bill Camp

Compliance is so bad that I hesitate even writing about it.  It is filled with such an entitled sense of purpose and meaning that the cruel sexist joke it ends up becoming is all the more disheartening.  Supporters of the film will have you believe that because it is based on “true events” that its morality is somehow less disturbing.  To them I would say: The Blind Side.

Craig Zobel, the writer and director of this movie, knew exactly what he was doing.  In portraying an infamous fast food prank call caught on security cameras where a manager talks with an alleged police officer and obeys his every whim, he ends up illustrating a sadistic fantasy under the guise of morality.  Sandra (Ann Dowd), a middle-aged manager at the fictional fast food chain Chick-Wich, is the principle woman on the other end of that phone.  A man posing as a police officer (Pat Healy) calls her claiming that one of the cashiers (Dreama Walker) was caught on camera stealing from a customer’s purse.

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