As he’s questioned by a therapist in the opening scene of the film bearing his name, we see Charles Swan III’s subconscious literally spurt out of his head. It’s visualized as an animated collage largely made up of ladies’ long, disembodied legs — like those in the ’40s pinups that…
Nine years on from her intoxicating road-movie debut, Somersault, Australian director Cate Shortland has fashioned a different kind of journey — this one set amid the winding trails of the Bavarian woods, circa 1945. There, the five children of a captured Nazi officer flee toward what they hope is safety…
Elisabeth Moss’ face is far from the only reason to savor Top of the Lake, Jane Campion’s smart, bracing, hugely enjoyable mystery rural noir Top of the Lake, which premieres on the Sundance Channel on Monday, March 18. But that pale-to-radiant instrument of hers—a mouth that suggests her characters might…
It’s a bad omen when, early on in Oz the Great and Powerful, we learn that the full given name of its wizard is Oscar, also the ceremony that star James Franco once presided over as calamitously as he does this sagging Disney tent pole, a gargantuan attempt to turn…
The most expansive of the many provocative assertions in The Gatekeepers, Dror Moreh’s Oscar-nominated interrogation of six former heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s renowned intelligence agency, is that Shin Bet men age to the left — and become more critical of Israel. Why this might be so is the larger…
Twenty minutes into the first full-length movie based on L. Frank Baum’s most beloved novel, a duck pukes into the face of Larry Semon, the star and director. Semon’s 1925 flop, titled The Wizard of Oz, opens and closes with a Geppetto-esque toymaker reading to his granddaughter from a well-loved…
To paraphrase Stephen Sondheim, there are big, tall, terrible, fleshy, bulbous-headed giants in the sky in Jack the Giant Slayer. And what would a big-budget, mildly revisionist, 3-D spin on Jack and the Beanstalk be if those fearsome beasties didn’t somehow make it down to sea level, where a storybook…
There’s a reason, beyond basic Judd Apatow oversaturation, that hardly anyone went to see his mewl of middle-aged despair This Is 40. A movie about a marriage already in progress — as opposed to one about a marriage just waiting to happen, the province of the romantic comedy — is…
With his fluttery falsetto and haughty gaze, Ruben, the flamboyantly gay, ambivalently Jewish 20-something hero of the new French comedy Let My People Go!, is the kind of big-screen character usually relegated to the sidelines. It’s refreshing to see him front and center, gamely played by Nicolas Maury, gangly limbs…
In downtown Fort Lauderdale is a small, charming church turned movie theater (with a bar!) called Cinema Paradiso. Too bad many locals don’t even know about it, as it’s virtually hidden behind towering condos near the courthouse. Also underappreciated is that Broward County has a big-deal film fest, the Fort…
If Sundance signals the annual launch of American indie cinema’s new product line, the 63-year-old Berlin Film Festival (February 7-17) offers the year’s first major look at what the rest of the world has to offer. In addition to the 19-film official competition — this year presided over by jury…
The murder of the children should be the most disturbing thing. But for many viewers, that isn’t the case in the four films chronicling the arrest, conviction, and 18-year incarceration of Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin for a crime they didn’t commit. The crime-scene photos of three young…
Why is there evil in the world?” That question and its corollaries — Where does evil come from? Why can so many create and commit it with apparent immunity? — are at the core of the film Bless Me, Ultima, whose seven-year-old hero, Antonio, wrestles with riddles that have likely…
Depending on your perspective, Zooey Deschanel is either the cutest, funniest, most adorable little retro-kookster on earth, or she’s an irritating try-hard with zero comedy chops. The only thing the world seems able to universally agree on is that Deschanel has nice bangs. As such, her sitcom — New Girl,…
For the past two decades, Eytan Fox has been Israel’s foremost chronicler of gay life — and the homoeroticized military — in the land of milk and honey. With Yossi, he has pulled off the rare feat of making a sequel that surpasses the original. Released in 2002, the director’s…
Yet another cavalierly abstinent teen hero sulks through the swamps of Beautiful Creatures, a shot of pop-goth hogwash so overheated that during its run theater owners could set aside a couple of aisles and cultivate Louisiana passionflower. Here witch Lena (Alice Englert) is urged by her family to spurn the…
Does anyone care about John McClane anymore? That’s not the same as asking if you want to see A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth in this series of films with increasingly outlandish action—and increasingly cumbersome titles. The most recent entry—the slick, ridiculous hit, Live Free or Die Hard—was…
Abbas Kiarostami is preoccupied with my tape recorder. He wonders if it’s too far away from where he’s sitting. He makes his translator switch from one side of him to another so that the recorder is between them. After a while, clearly still anxious about, he picks it up and…
Just a week or so after the Pentagon reversed its ban on allowing female soldiers into combat, here’s another breakthrough of a sort: The funniest scenes in the confused and shaggy comedy Identity Thief are of Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman beating the hell out of each other. McCarthy —…
There’s scant dialogue but plenty of eloquent storytelling in the five animated short films up for a 2013 Oscar, all of which — along with their live-action and documentary counterparts — will get a pre-awards-show release just over the county line at the Coral Gables Art Cinema beginning this Friday,…
To watch Melissa McCarthy as lovable chef Sookie St. James on seven seasons of the Gilmore Girls was to see an actress perfect the art of playing a sidekick. As best friend of the show’s protagonist, Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham), McCarthy dutifully provided comic relief and a shoulder on which…
“I’ve been lucky in that I’ve always worked with writers whose voices are so specific that there really isn’t any way to recalibrate things without them being intimately involved,” says Steven Soderbergh as he swivels in a chair in the happily cluttered New York loft space that doubles as his…
