I just finished viewing The Heat, the most recent buddy-cop genre flick featuring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. And in light of the current buzz in the film community, I could not help but notice how The Heat is one of the supposedly few 2013 movies that pass the “Bechdel Test,” which has apparently become the proxy for detecting gender bias in film. In case you have not heard, to ... Read More »
10. Ruby Sparks (written by Zoe Kazan, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, starring Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Chris Messina, Annette Bening, and Antonio Banderas). Ironic and quirky. A man creates his “soulmate” with his writing, but this film is clearly written from her point of view. Still, this movie is both fun and thought provoking. 9. Sound of My Voice (written by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, ... Read More »
10. Holy Motors (written and directed by Leos Carax, and starring Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Kylie Minogue, and Eva Mendes). At the outset, I feel obliged to say that this top 10 list tends to reward ambition more than it probably should. In this respect, Holy Motors generally defies comparison to any other film released this year. Director Carax follows “working actor” Lavant through a single day consisting of ... Read More »
In all honesty, I cannot say that I am as optimistic about the films slated for release in 2013 as I was for 2012. The cinemas will be full of more prequels and sequels than ever. Apparently, the argument about whether to pump so much money into franchise films is over. The only remaining disagreement seems to be over title conventions – should the powers-that-be go ... Read More »
I normally save my “bests” and “worsts” for the end of the year, but in the case of trailers, I feel confident that all of the 2012 entries are in. Most of us have mixed feelings about trailers. Certainly, a trailer can ruin the plot of a film. Similarly, being exposed to a trailer too many times can have the opposite ... Read More »
Having just battled through the difficulty of writing a post about my favorite Stephen King horror adaptations, I was dismayed by several recent reviews for Cloud Atlas (2012) – the Wachowski siblings’ adaptation of David Mitchell’s best-selling novel. I have not read this novel, but I feel like I have. I mean, I am now well aware of the differences in narrative structure between the film and the novel, thanks ... Read More »
Spoiler Scale (How spoilery is this article on a scale of 1 to 10?): 2 In 1952, at the age of 24, director Stanley Kubrick borrowed about $10,000 from family and friends to make his first feature film, Fear and Desire (1953), based on a script by his personal friend, Howard Sackler (who later won the Pulitzer Prize for The Great White Hope in 1968). At the time, Kubrick ... Read More »
Unless you have been living under a rock the last week and immune to the ever-escalating media coverage, the YouTube clips purporting to be a trailer for a movie entitled “The Innocence of Muslims” (in short form and long form) – portraying Mohammad in less than flattering terms – was recently translated into Arabic and sparked a series of violent protests in half a dozen nations in ... Read More »
Spoiler Scale (How spoilery is this article on a scale of 1 to 10)? 5 In my opinion, director David Fincher made two of his best films within the grim serial killer subgenre – Se7en (1995) and Zodiac (2007) – each of which is quite different from the other. Rooney Mara, who plays the title character in this latest adaptation Stieg Larsson’s posthumous and wildly successful ... Read More »
