Posts Tagged ‘Movies’

Saibi (The Fake) Review

Posted: May 6, 2014 in Foreign, Reviews
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2013 - The Fake (still 6)Yeon Sang-ho’s first feature film, Dwae-ji-ui wang (The King of Pigs), achieved a certain notoriety and acclaim on the festival circuit as an animated film that offered an unusually brutal and vivid depiction of bullying in a South Korean middle school and the ramifications of the abuse on the victims and their subsequent relationships as adults. Sang-ho’s follow-up, Saibi or The Fake, shows that the director and writer continues to develop as this work offers a richer and more nuanced plot and greater depth in characterization. The animation is improved as well.

That is not to say that the movie is easier to watch.

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Filth Review

Posted: May 4, 2014 in Comedy, Drama, Reviews
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Filth-the-movie-2100615So what are we to make of Filth? Is it a comedy as advertised, a crime pic focused on a murder investigation, or a drama about one man’s inner demons?

There are parts within the first stretch that are howlingly funny, and the movie starts as if it will earn a place as a paragon of bad taste alongside such entries as South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, Bad Santa, and Ted. James McAvoy portrays Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson as if he were Denzel Washington in an uproarious redo of Training Day. Robertson’s the type that will coerce a minor into sex and then criticize her technique. He’s after a promotion to Inspector, and he handicaps his competition on the Edinburgh police force for the audience with the odds flashing up in a graphic on screen after he verbally skews each of them.

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The Sacrament Review

Posted: May 3, 2014 in Horror, Reviews, Thriller
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the-sacrament-joe-swanberg-in-un-immagine-dal-set-283325Ti West’s new work, The Sacrament, is a surprisingly good movie that uses the events of the infamous Jonestown Massacre of 1978 as the basis for a faux documentary that investigates a commune which the elderly, poor, and disadvantaged have established in the jungle of an unidentified country under the direction of a charismatic preacher they call Father. Generally, the material is not handled in an exploitative manner nor does the final result belong in any way to the horror genre, although the movie has been incorrectly characterized by some as such.

And for those reasons, the film is unlikely to attract the audience it deserves.

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Favor Review

Posted: May 1, 2014 in Reviews, Thriller
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favor_111The last twenty minutes of a thriller are like the last two minutes of an NBA game: no matter how good the action has been up until then, it all comes down to the closing moments. Paul Osborne, director and writer of the new feature film Favor, gets this. He nails the last twenty minutes of the movie with a couple of well-timed twists, which make up for a few shortcomings and elevate the effort into a solid little flick that is worth a watch.

The premise is simple and established immediately. The paths of two childhood friends have diverged. The successful one shows up at the house of the other in the middle of the night to ask a favor. His lead-in to the request: “You once said, ‘You can tell how good a friend is by whether or not they’ll help you move a dead body.”

Okay, guess what the favor is.

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Boyhood Review

Posted: April 27, 2014 in 2014 Berlinale, Drama, Reviews
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boyhood-stillIt is a gimmick, and one could argue that it is not even original.

Since 1964, 14 British schoolchildren have been followed by documentary filmmakers who have presented their findings every seven years in the so-called Up Series with the titles matching the age of the participants (7 Up, 14 Up, etc.). Still, it may be unprecedented for a feature filmmaker to take the same approach, but that is what Richard Linklater did. Beginning in 2002, and continuing over the next 12 years, Linklater brought together the same core group of actors for a few days of filming with the intent to put together a movie on growing up, which, in fact, was the working title for most of the 12 years.

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Sin-ui Seon-mul (Godsend) Review

Posted: April 26, 2014 in Drama, Foreign, Reviews
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1d4dc73113914baa80f967167b0c4993The treatment of rape in the arts – particularly the visual portrayal of the incident and its aftermath in movies and television – remains controversial though not taboo. In the most recently completed season of the British soap opera, Downton Abbey, fan favorite Anna was assaulted, and viewers did not respond well. Most believed it a cheap plot device that was not justified by the subsequent direction of the story or treatment of the characters involved. The same criticisms also apply to Sin-ui Seon-mul (Godsend), the new film from Korean director Moon Si-Hyun. Midway through the film, the narrative is derailed by a violent and artistically indefensible act that undercuts the good will that the director and her actresses have established to that point. The story does not recover, but instead lurches through a series of increasingly difficult and preposterous moments before finishing with a cloying, unsatisfying sequence.

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13 Sins Review

Posted: April 22, 2014 in Reviews, Thriller
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1397895448_33There are two things working against 13 Sins, the new thriller in which a man becomes an unwitting contestant on a game show that compels him to engage in increasingly antisocial behavior. The first is the film’s own weaknesses, beginning with uneven performances, implausible assumptions, and threadbare plot points. The second disadvantage – and the one over which the filmmakers had no control – is the recent wide release of Cheap Thrills, a far superior entry in the “What would you be willing to do for a buck?” genre.

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Las brujas de Zugarramurdi (Witching and Bitching) Review

Posted: April 19, 2014 in Foreign, Horror, Reviews
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witchingandbitching_01It’s a safe bet that filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia is in complete agreement with the famous Oscar Wilde quote: “Moderation is fatal. Nothing succeeds like excess.” No two sentences could better describe de la Iglesia’s approach in his latest film, Las brujas de Zugarramurdi (aka Witching and Bitching), a frenetic visual and linguistic exercise in the extreme. Over-the-top is the movie’s starting point, and the Spanish director is hellbent on ratcheting up the absurdity at every opportunity. While ultimately the film suffers from being too much of a good thing – a trim of about ten minutes from the 104-minute run time would be in order – the picture is so original, the cast so committed, and the production design so much fun that the experience is as irresistible as the English language title.

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The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Review

Posted: April 17, 2014 in Action, Reviews
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THE-AMAZING-SPIDERMAN-SCREENCAPS-00If you are wondering whether The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is as good as the first one, you are asking the wrong question. You should be considering the possibility that the new movie, which opened in Europe this week in advance of its May 2 premiere in the United States, is as bad as Spider-Man 3, the movie that put the stake through the heart of the franchise the first time around. Actually, this latest tale blows past the badness of Spider-Man 3 and winds up in the company of Superman 3 and 4 and both Fantastic Four films as one of the worst major character comic book movies since the modern era began with the Christopher Reeves Superman in 1978. (Catwoman, Daredevil, Elektra, and Ghost Rider are second-tier titles at best and do not merit inclusion in the discussion.)

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Art Girls Review

Posted: April 15, 2014 in Foreign, Reviews
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Maturanazwillinge-mit-Angels_falckenbergmaxmittelNo one sets out to make The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Even those responsible for The Rocky Horror Picture Show did not intend to produce the phenomenon. The midnight-show cult classic was the unintended consequence of a desperate movie studio trying to recoup some of its investment after the film bombed in its initial, traditional theater run. Therefore, it is inherently unfair to say that a picture should have aspired to being the next Rocky Horror, but that may be the most constructive criticism to offer Art Girls, a genre mash-up of a movie that never melds.

Director and screenwriter Robert Bramkamp dips his toe into the swimming pool of camp, but refuses to dive in. (more…)

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