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Synopsis is the devil, but sometimes the devil is in the details. Here’s Tribeca Film’s synopsis of writer-director-actor-producer Edward Burns’ microbudget romantic comedy and fan letter to New York’s upscale Tribeca neighborhood, “Newlyweds”: “Buzzy (Edward Burns) and Katie (Caitlin FitzGerald) are a newly married couple living a seemingly conflict-free life. But when Buzzy’s damaged and impulsive half-sister Linda (Kerry Bishé) arrives at their doorstep expecting to stay for an indefinite period in their Tribeca loft, her antics threaten to disrupt the couple’s commitment to an ‘easy’ marriage.” Sounds like any romantic comedy, but it’s more like Woody Allen on a designer shoestring. Read the rest of this entry »

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When the dream to become an astronaut can be attained only by having already become a decamillionaire… That’s the world we live on, and some of us hope to rocket from. Videogame designer Richard Garriott’s father was an astronaut, but his own hopes were dashed when he developed nearsightedness in childhood. (Garriott was one of the founders of MMORPGs, or “Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games.”) But what if you had the money in advancing years to found a company—”Space Adventures”—and could scrawl your name onto a $30 million check to buy your way onto Russia’s Soyuz and the International Space Station? Read the rest of this entry »

In “The Devil Inside,” William Brent Bell’s mock-documentary, Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) travels to Rome with filmmaker Michael (Ionut Grama) to investigate an attempted exorcism twenty years prior that left Isabella’s mother (Suzan Crowley) committed in a mental hospital outside Vatican City. After an unsettling reunion leaves her unsure that her mother’s affliction is psychological, she appeals to devout David (Evan Helmuth) and cynical Ben (Simon Quarterman)—both of whom are ordained priests as well as exorcists—for help. When Isabella and Michael accompany the two priests to an exorcism to learn about possession and determine the truth about her mother, they fall into a world of the possessed Read the rest of this entry »

By Ray Pride

When does work become a “work”?

Almost as fascinating as the cool, perfectionist sheen of David Fincher’s version of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” is the tattoo of tales of the making of the movie. Collaborators seem to go to special lengths to point out that the painstaking focus Fincher applies to his work is just what he does: his splendid perfectionism isn’t workaholism, it’s work, the work. He’s Lisbeth Salander in his own immodest analytical skills. As the film industry transforms in so many ways, in every way, from distribution to projection to production, the directors who’ve unapologetically forged their own way are often as fascinating behind-the-scenes as they are on screen. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Dee Rees’ Sundance-honored dramatic debut about the coming out of a seventeen-year-old African-American woman who lives with her parents in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, has both substance and style. “Pariah” is luminous and boldly lit, in a range of warm-to-hot colors, often against velvet-dark backgrounds, reminiscent of some of the sturdiest images of co-producer Spike Lee’s movies. (Bradford Young took Sundance 2011′s Excellence in Cinematography Award.) Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Dotty, unvarnished and unwashed, Jenner Furst and Daniel B. Levin’s “Dirty Old Town” (2010) is a fugue-cum-fantasia set in Billy’s Antiques and Props, one of the last remaining bastions of ruffian funk in the Bowery area of downtown Manhattan. Aggressive music, in-your-face performances and a general air of malaise and malodorousness mark the sketch-style assembly, which has garnered favorable remarks from local denizens Jim Jarmusch and Abel Ferrara, who notably said “This movie is fucking real.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Xavier Durringer’s “The Conquest” (La conquete) is a perky, cheeky take on the rise of French President Nicolas Sarkozy from 2002-2007, featuring a fine turn by veteran comic actor Denis Podalydès as the wife-shedding social striver. Podalydès does a splendid job of typing the small, schlumpfy man’s apparent (and reported) well of arrogance. While there may be subtleties that were more apparent to the local audience, as well as the litany of scandals mentioned, Durringer’s approach is that of the boulevard comedy, of ready and amusing caricatures of politicos behind the scenes—a supremely foul-mouthed Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy as “the chirping magpie”—that beg the question whether it is a diminution of stature in politics or simple satiric instinct that makes such an acerbic portrait ring true. Read the rest of this entry »

Actress Angelina Jolie writes and directs the upsetting story of a Bosnian woman who survives the Balkan conflict without the backup of stunt women, unlike Jolie’s doubles in such action-adventures as “Salt,” “Wanted,” and “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.” “In the Land of Blood and Honey” recalls Michael Winterbottom’s “A Mighty Heart,” where Jolie played the wife of a real-life journalist decapitated by terrorists in Pakistan, and “Beyond Borders,” where she played a fictional do-gooder in Cambodian and Chechnyan conflicts. Read the rest of this entry »

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Battling the man in Brooklyn: can one man stand in the way of devastating progress as a neighborhood is sacrificed to a oligarchic developer’s profit? In Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley’s Oscar-shortlisted longitudinal doc, “Battle for Brooklyn” follows several years in the life of Daniel Goldstein and his family, renters in the Prospect Heights neighborhood who are besieged by an especially shabby case of eminent domain abuse on the part of Bloomberg’s New York City. Read the rest of this entry »