Romanian émigré and film essayist Andrei Ujica’s acclaimed Videograms of a Revolution trilogy, which includes the 1992 film of that name as well as his profile of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, Out of the Present (1995), finally concludes with The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, his genre-bending final chapter, which he fondly calls part of the “new non-fiction” that is taking the world of cinema by storm. Culling through several decades worth of propaganda films from the Romanian National Television and Film Archives, he takes wildly out of context footage and gently stews it together into a three hour epic rumination on Romania’s mid and late Communist periods […]
Effortlessly gorgeous and consistently engrossing, Rowan Joffe’s feature debut is an update of Brighton Rock, an adaptation of the Graham Greene crime novel first filmed in 1947 by the Boulting Brothers and starring a very young Richard Attenborough in what turned out to be a breakthrough role of sorts. The earlier film, which has developed a minor cult for its odd mixture of lurid noir stylings and depiction of pre-war British coastal life, is set in the late ’30s, with Europe’s headlong leap into war providing the backdrop for the tale of the sociopathic young gangster Pinkie Brown and the ill-fated […]
If one had to pick a film that represents regional, micro-budget American filmmaking at its finest, Malcolm Murray’s Albuquerque, New Mexico set Bad Posture would certainly have to be in the conversation. The story a recently unemployed graffiti artist with a bad cigarette habit and a dope dealing roommate, its the type of tale that at first glimpse seem superfluous. Our awkward, unassuming outsider artist, played by Florian Brozek, who also wrote the film, begins to hit on a young woman named Marisa (Tabitha Shaun) in a park but is thwarted when his roommate steals her purse and car while he’s laying […]
You’ve seen it all before. Amidst a sea of police corruption, one last honest, wisecracking cop and an improbable sidekick unravel a series of criminal entanglements.They’re an unlikely pair and one of them is surely way out of his natural element. There will be chases, usually with cars, although likely on foot too, and gunplay, half quotable one-liners, and maybe a dash of suspense, although it’s highly unlikely either of our leads will meet an untimely demise. How could anyone possible make a tired scenario like this fresh? Just ask John Michael McDonagh, brother of Martin, the lauded Irish playwright […]
As globalism renders the world ever smaller, national boundaries seem increasingly porous, if not outright irrelevant to the study of cinema. Yet Errol Morris still strikes me as a distinctly American filmmaker. From pet cemeteries in California (Gates of Heaven) to death row in Texas (The Thin Blue Line), from the Vietnam War (The Fog of War) to the Iraq War (Standard Operating Procedure), and in ads for the presidential campaigns of John Kerry and Barack Obama, Morris tends to bring his insatiable curiosity and searing intellect to stories and characters that, for all their strangeness and improbability, are inseparable […]
One of Canada’s hottest filmmaking prospects for much of the aughts, Toronto-based Ed Gass-Donnelly made a reputation for himself as a prolific short filmmaker, making the festival rounds with several shorts during the first half of the decade. He broke through as a feature director with his 2007 drama This Beautiful City, a look at five disparate citizens of Ontario’s largest metropolis that is at once a sprawling ensemble piece and an intimate investigation into ordinary lives intertwined by extraordinary events. A favorite at that year’s Toronto International Film Festival, it went on to be nominated for four Genie Awards […]
For the past twenty-five years John Turturro has been one of the most dynamic presences in American narrative filmmaking, both in the independent world and in Hollywood. His roles in films such as Do The Right Thing, Barton Fink, Quiz Show and The Big Lebowski cemented his place as one of the most versatile actors around, someone who could slip easily between extremely varied character roles while occasionally moonlighting as a leading man. Beyond his work as an actor, he’s also directed a trio of mostly terrific feature narratives, 1992’s Mac, 1998’s Illuminata and 2005’s Romance and Cigarettes. With his […]
In 2004 it was announced that real-estate developer and New Jersey Nets co-owner Bruce Ratner planned to build a new arena for the team on the Atlantic Rail Yards site. Right in the heart of the borough, just a short walk from Downtown Brooklyn, Ft. Greene, Park Slope and Prospect Heights, it was a prime piece of real-estate, and the developer stood to make a tremendous amount of money if he could successfully move the team to Brooklyn. Despite coming with the promise of mixed-income housing, many locals were unconvinced of the project’s necessity and many who lived in the […]
Three years ago Sundance played host to Mia Trachinger’s weird, beguiling take on the low-fi, sci-fi dystopia genre, Reversion. Odd, playful, melancholy and ultimately riveting, it bounced around the fest circuit for the past couple of years without finding a home with specialty distributors, perhaps a sign of just how ahead of its time it was. A couple of years later Sundance began its NEXT section, a category for films just like Reversion; adventurous, low budget mindbenders, genre deconstructions and idiosyncratic visions that SXSW would normally be the target destination for. Trachinger, whose Bunny was a success of the festival […]
It’s been a dozen years since the Columbine tragedy and almost a half decade since the Virginia Tech shooting, but random outbursts of violence by troubled young male students with easy access to weaponry are still among the most troubling topics that our society is struggling to come to grips with. Less self consciously arty than say an Elephant or We Need to Talk About Kevin, Shawn Ku‘s Beautiful Boy tells the story of Bill and Kate, (Michael Sheen and Maria Bello), a relatively comfortable suburban couple who have entered middle age content but relatively uninspired. First and foremost a […]