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 […]
Moral questions about science, war, justice, and ethics were at the forefront of some of the strongest international work at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. “He’s really not judgmental of his characters at all, is he?” said one party-goer of the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. Between bites of warm peaches and pistachio ice cream at a reception for the filmmaker’s sleek, stylish new thriller, The Skin I Live In, party-goers discussed the dark, unsettling tale of a mad scientist (played with panache by Antonio Banderas) who develops a miraculous new variety of human skin and a fraught relationship with his sad, beautiful […]
Summer is a strange and wonderful time when many of the rules of regular conduct cease to apply, and this pertains not just to the frequency of ice cream consumption and the blessing of “summer Fridays.” Many people have an image of how genre films are usually consumed – by dedicated genre fans, in a quirky downtown arthouse theater, perhaps, or via DVDs shipped from Hong Kong while alone on the couch wearing a snuggie — but in the summer, the entire country seems to develop a taste for blood or kung fu. Independent genre features continue to be released, […]
Sheffield-based Matt Pyke makes digital art that’s rooted in the physical. In his show Super-Computer-Romantics, organic processes (growth, decay), nature, or simply natural actions (walking, running) shape computer-generated ones. A series of people — dancers, actually — struggle against a digital windstorm that blows them, literally, to bytes. A mesmerizing life-size wall-projected walking man, his footsteps providing the drumbeat for a slab of noisy electro, is a constant mutation as his body shapeshifts from diamonds to fur to rainbow-hued electric hair. In an alcove, a series of winter-y trees find their limbs illuminated with electronic leaves when you step into […]
(The Tree of Life is distributed by Fox Searchlight. It opens in NYC and LA on Friday, May 27, 2010, and expands to many more cities in the subsequent six weeks, before opening nationwide on Friday, July 8. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) NOTE: While I’d venture to say this movie can’t be “spoiled” by a review, there is a lot of specific detail contained in this (perhaps too lengthy) reaction. For what it’s worth, I suggest that you experience the film having read as little as possible beforehand. It seems implausible to me that anyone would […]
Too often in the movies, affairs are either blithely romanticized in the grand European tradition of middlebrow “passion” films (The French Lieutenant’s Woman comes to mind) or used as a teaching tool to bludgeon audiences into accepting a damning moral perspective on the consequences of extramarital activity. (See Little Children, for instance.) Life has its own current, though, and the nature of relationships sometimes follows a pattern that is chaotic and irrational, messy and perturbing, where the boundaries between love and naked contempt (ah, Godard!) are no longer discernible. Movies from Voyage to Italy all the way down to Maren […]
I ran into filmmaker — and Filmmaker “25 New Face” — Kyle Henry at the American Pavilion in Cannes, and I was startled to learn that he was attending the festival… but skipping his screening. He offered to explain in a blog post. Your film gets into the Directors’ Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival, and you can’t stay for your screening… are you crazy? Well, that was my case this year. My film Fourplay: Tampa, a short that is part of the anthology-of-shorts feature Fourplay, got the magical golden ticket to one of the festival sections at Cannes this […]
Sad news today: the passing of veteran independent distributor, Kino’s Donald Krim, who has been responsible for the U.S. release of many of the best films ever made. Throughout his long career, he handpicked excellent world cinema titles as well as the best of the American independents, creating one of the most enviable libraries around. Remarkably, Krim’s taste remained on the cutting edge even in his later years — witness last year’s release of the extraordinary Dogtooth. He will be missed. Below is the press release we received from Kino. May 20, 2011 – Donald B. Krim (b. October 5, […]
The controversy that has resulted in the Cannes Film Festival — which shows itself to be the spineless tool of a government uniquely, like many of its citizens, obsessed with self-image — declaring Lars von Trier persona non grata on account of his comments that began with his upbringing as a Jew is a despicable, hypocritical mountain made from a molehill. (Would The Producers be banned here? Hardly. Will I lose my accreditation in the future for writing this? I would not put it past them.) Laws about expressing antisemitism are strict here (six months in prison, clearly related to […]
(Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo is now available on DVD through Factory 25. Visit the film’s official website to learn more. NOTE: This review was first published at Hammer to Nail in conjunction with the film’s theatrical release at Film Forum on May 12, 2010.) The knowledge that Jessica Oreck is an entomologist at the Museum of Natural History in New York City who has never previously made a film might cause one to worry that Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo will be an unavoidably stiff and grueling piece of video academia. Worry not, skeptic. Oreck’s wildly precocious exploration of Japan’s ongoing […]