Authors — Howard Feinstein
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Gerardo Naranjo, Miss Bala
A model hybrid of seemingly effortless form and true-to-life action is the astonishing Miss Bala, by 42-year-old Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo. His earlier, teen-focused works, Drama/Mex and I’m Gonna Explode, while they are expertly crafted (and especially alluring for those with a penchant for handheld camera and super-8), were a tad heavy-fisted for the subject matter, as if they were laden with an extra injection of testosterone. Could it be that in making Miss Bala (bala means bullet, and is a pun on Baja) about grown-ups and placing a 23-year-old woman (and her POV) front and center, he has, in the best way, […]
by Howard Feinstein on Jan 18, 2012 -
ALL THAT ELEVEN ALLOWS
I plead guilty. I’ve committed the writer’s sin of entitling this article with a heavily loaded pun that threatens to undermine what follows. Referencing a 65-year-old recognized masterwork of classic Hollywood melodrama — one by Douglas Sirk, no less — that has stood the test of time, then segueing into more of the best-of-this-and-that-from-2011 litanies that every film journo is tossing into the blogosphere right now, stacks the deck against the most recent productions. A few will be remembered, but All That Heaven Allows stays with us. Out of all possibilities, this is the one Todd Haynes chose as a […]
by Howard Feinstein on Dec 27, 2011 -
THE MOTHER AND CHILD REUNION: “WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN”
The title is ironic: The conversation never happens. (Kevin’s mom suggests it in a voiced-over letter to her husband, but, if it is even sent, it is — seemingly — ignored.) Eva (the chameleon-like Tilda Swinton, brilliant as ever) and Franklin (John C. Reilly) are the parents of a troubled boy who tortures his mother with line-crossing defiance. (He is played by three kids of different ages. The principal action revolves around the oldest, perfectly portrayed by Afterschool’s Ezra Miller as an intimidating glop of arrogant negativity.) Eva never wanted the unplanned child. She yells much more loudly than necessary during childbirth and appears desolate in her hospital bed. […]
by Howard Feinstein on Dec 9, 2011 -
“LETTERS FROM THE BIG MAN”: THE RETURN OF CHRISTOPHER MUNCH
Movie lovers with a prolonged case of the Munchies could soon be sated. Indie-pure director Christopher Munch is back, in fine form, with his latest film, Letters From the Big Man. Munch imbues his works with a distinct nostalgic longing. The Germans have a precise word for it: Sehnsucht. He explores that chaotic region where two forms of desire butt up against each other: the wish for a more perfect world, for one, usually depicted as majestic nature and whatever beauty man might have put into it (the old, deserted railroad in Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day) — […]
by Howard Feinstein on Nov 7, 2011 -
COCK OF THE WALK: THE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL (PART THREE)
Three films, three male protagonists, all of whom fall for extended periods of time from their elevated perches. In this, the final installment of my coverage of the 49th edition of the New York Film Festival, we see how their descents are manifest in the newest works of three proven talents — okay, all of them men: British director Steve McQueen, the American Alexander Payne, and Frenchman Michel Hazanavicius. Michael Fassbender’s sexually obsessed Brandon, a seemingly calm, self-contained Manhattan business exec who keeps his personal life to himself in McQueen’s Shame (pictured above), would have been a much more challenging, certainly […]
by Howard Feinstein on Oct 7, 2011 -
EASTERN PROMISES, WESTERN AVOWALS: THE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL (PART TWO)
That undefinable thing called texture: It is a principal difference between cinematographic imagery from West and East. For starters, take a look at the wall show of French celebrity photos in the Walter Reade Theater’s Roy Furman Gallery, faces and torsos foregrounded with little or no regard for light or materials, and complete disregard for context. Then take a look at the stills pictured here from the four films reviewed below. In the Canadian/British A Dangerous Method, by David Cronenberg, and the American Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, they are basically head shots, not particularly interesting, and they tell you little […]
by Howard Feinstein on Oct 4, 2011 -
MORE IS MORE: THE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL (PART ONE)
The New York Film Festival is “the most famous and prestigious in the country,” according to the website of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. It may well be–though I think San Francisco and Telluride might balk at the statement. And the term the country only technically leaves out Toronto. Superlatives aside, this 49th edition, quite a good one overall, is nothing if not admirably ambitious. No longer can the NYFF be accused of replicating Cannes, or of including a disproportionate number of gallic films. What is called the Main Slate, the core of the festival, is, however, top-heavy with […]
by Howard Feinstein on Sep 28, 2011 -
TORONTO: THE PATRON SAINTS
The second shot of The Patron Saints is a slow pan across a wide swath of no-man’s land, the sad sound of a prairie wind reinforcing the impression of emptiness. Suddenly the camera stops moving at the sight of a building, several stories high, looking as if it were plunked down on Auntie Em’s farm in Oz after the tornado. There are no signs: This feels like the middle of nowhere. Thanks to five years of work by filmmakers Brian Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky, we are able to experience what is inside, meeting and observing the residents whose privacy, like […]
by Howard Feinstein on Sep 9, 2011 -
TORONNA ON MY MIND
The social network has made festival overviews easier to assemble. Besides the dvds that are made available in advance, several websites (Festival Scope, Cinando) make features available after their market premieres, which may have taken place at Festival A before their official screening at Festival B. Doing the circuit certainly makes Toronto more manageable. Since it is not a competitive event (they don’t have to be, as some insist), a number of films have been shown elsewhere (Cannes, Berlin, Sundance), so you might have several titles under your belt without ever having a market badge. Some publicists send links and passwords […]
by Howard Feinstein on Sep 7, 2011 -
THE MEXICAN WAVE ROLLS IN
Mexico remains a heavily stratified society, despite the strides made over the past 50 years in bridging an enormous socio-economic gap. A non-centralized wave of films has been building there over the past decade, and cinema, the most accessible of art forms, reflects the divide. One could argue that the directors make a choice: poverty or the bourgeoisie. You can observe the schism for yourself in the excellent 10-film series GenMex: Recent Films from Mexico, running September 9-22 at New York’s Anthology Film Archives. The exhibition begins with a one-week run of Eugenio Polgovsky’s The Inheritors, September 9-15. The other titles each […]
by Howard Feinstein on Aug 29, 2011
