Apr 18
Michael Ealy, Taraji P. Henson
By Ray Pride
What’s the secret to making a good, contemporary, satisfying, successful commercial romantic comedy? Not even a classic, not even an “Annie Hall” or a “Some Like It Hot,” just one that embraces the here-and-now?
Just to be good. Talky, funny, headlong, “Think Like A Man” succeeds in its modern multi-couple roundelay by being brisk, breezy and sometimes shameless while feeling as modern as can be, and capturing its milieu in and near Culver City, California, as well as any urban-set story out this year. So what possible problem could it have reaching a wide, eager audience, the kind that makes hits of earnest movies from filmmakers like Nancy Meyers, about urbane, optimistic neurotics battling their worst impulses and eventually embracing their best? Read the rest of this entry »
Apr 05
Until “Avatar,” “Titanic” was the highest-grossing movie of all time. Whether or not its re-release in 3D adds substantially to its $605,000,000 worldwide gross is an open question. I talked to James Cameron before the initial release in 1997, when the general public hadn’t yet seen it, seen it, and seen it again. What did “Titanic” look like all those many years ago?
Click here to read the interview
Feb 24
Dark and tragic, “After Fall, Winter” is an internalized take on Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet.” “I wanted to portray two individuals who are desperately seeking intimacy, but have psychological roadblocks,” says director and screenwriter Eric Schaeffer, noting that he wanted to make a story that people could identify with.
As with many of his films, Schaeffer himself plays the male lead, Michael, a failing writer who moves to Paris in the hope of starting anew. When he meets Sophie (Lizzie Brocheré), a hospice nurse for the terminally ill, the two become involved in a relationship rife with secrets, emotional distance and an overwhelming desire to connect.
While Michael hides his interest in BD/SM, Sophie keeps secret the time she spends as a dominatrix. Read the rest of this entry »
Feb 10
By Kristen Micek
“Silhouettes” takes the heart of a romance, the weight of reflection on culture and race and the pain of isolation and transplants them into the city of Chicago and a single day. Screenwriter Tom Silva, with co-writer and director Gustavo Bernal-Mancheno, have created a love story about Aamod (Silva) and Nadia (Fawzia Mirza), two successful individuals drawn together by a chance encounter and a common sense of discord in their lives because they are torn between two cultures. The film’s combination of themes and genres is an attempt to break free of the preconceptions of ethnic characters and make a poignant and accessible film. Read the rest of this entry »
Dec 21
By Ray Pride
“I want you to help me find a killer of women.”
Rooney Mara attains the role of Lisbeth Salander in “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” with the slightest lift of her chin on hearing those words, the coldest fire in her eyes, as she matches the gaze of Daniel Craig’s Mikael Blomkvist.
Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy of novels reads, in its present English, like the worst rush translation on Earth, but at its heights, the late author’s moments of pulse-rushing pulp instinct are vital. And its immodest beating heart is Lisbeth. As adapted by screenwriter Steven Zaillian and director David Fincher, “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” is terse, telegraphic, fluent, a watercolor composed in molten pewter pen nib. Read the rest of this entry »
Dec 21
RECOMMENDED
“I won’t talk! I won’t say a word!” is the promise made in the opening scene of Michel Hazanavicius’ soundly entertaining “The Artist.” Keen pastiche, the terrific new trifle by the maker of the “OSS 117″ spy spoof series, offers a “Singin’ in the Rain”-variety reassurance to the modern movie industry that its origins were joyous and true and good. To appropriate Jonathan Rosenbaum’s phrase, “Goodbye, cinema: hello, cinephilia.” Masses will be entertained, and rightly so. It’s not a feel-good movie; it’s A Feel Great Movie! Read the rest of this entry »
Nov 18
Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson
RECOMMENDED
Antiseptic yet endearingly lurid, shiny as a polished stone, Bill Condon’s first of two “Twilight: Breaking Dawn” movies is a couple degrees cooler than camp but at least warmer than the grave. The Oscar-winning writer-director (for the script of “Gods and Monsters”) approaches the material with more tongue-in-cheek, largely in line readings, than earlier directors confronting the sparkly vampires and doggie werewolf boys who surround its hard-crushing teen-girl protagonist Bella. It’s efficient filmmaking shot straight to the heart of its expectant target audience. Kristen Stewart’s nasal murmur, smaller and smaller beside Robert Pattinson, makes for a toothy tiny bride in brown-eyed contacts, blushing, barefoot. Eat, prey, turn? Marry, fuck, thrill? “You have to accept what is,” a character says, meaningfully meaningless. Read the rest of this entry »
Oct 31
RECOMMENDED
#OccupyGattaca! Clever lad Andrew Niccol’s latest high-conceit parallel-universe science-fiction allegory, “In Time,” is also a bold, goofy, political parable that pits plutocrats who “come from time” (time = money) against the ninety-nine percent of the population that pay out their days in seconds against minutes. The unexplained gene-splicing that allows everyone to stay twenty-five sets an internal clock ticking on that birthday, which gives you a year: a year of currency to spend in order to live. You can stay twenty-five forever if you earn enough time and also evade the police, now known as “Timekeepers.” Read the rest of this entry »
