A number of weeks ago, we slathered on the love for the pastel geometric key art designs for Paul Feig's mystery thriller, A Simple Favour. As the film gets an international push, there has been consistency in the marketing campaign, and if anything international designers are taking things in further, even more satisfying directions. The film has been out in North America for a more than a week, and is getting very kind reviews, including our own Jim Tudor who sums up the film, "What begins as a curiously percolating character study gives way to an engagingly convoluted murder mystery before settling into a mile-long explanation and frankly nutty resolution." Back to the poster: Consider the martini glass here, and how it fits into the...
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[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 9/21/2018
- Screen Anarchy
This weekend, Rian Johnson's Star Wars: The Last Jedi conquered box offices worldwide, and there was much rejoicing, wailing and the gnashing of teeth, as with any film in this franchise. Our Jim Tudor had fun with it, and says in his review that the film still contains some of the series' magic. Among the familiar faces in this film there are some newcomers too, and star-powered ones (pun intended) at that: Benicio Del Toro and Laura Dern aren't lightweights exactly. Laura Dern, for example, has been a much-appreciated presence in blockbusters and art-house films alike. Over the last thirty years she's won many awards and nominations, and she can adorn her mantelpiece with a few Golden Globes and an Emmy. So let's make her...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 12/18/2017
- Screen Anarchy
Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 has hit cinemas worldwide, and while it didn't set the Us box-office on fire, it made the hearts of many film critics beat faster. Some outright love it, some are on the fence, but everyone seems to agree Villeneuve has at least made a film which stimulates you to feel and think. It's hardly your standard multi-million dollar sequel. Our Jim Tudor wrote in his review that "Despite minor criticisms (and all of my criticisms are indeed minor), Villeneuve has delivered what is an undeniable visual and aural smorgasbord, something that absolutely must be experienced cinematically, and without distraction." True words. And (as seen above) Harrison Ford is in it, so let's make him our featured actor this week! What...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 10/9/2017
- Screen Anarchy
Steven Soderbergh's Logan Lucky has hit cinemas, and while it hasn't run off with the box office yet, fans of the quirky director sure get their money's worth. In his review, Jim Tudor says: "Your mileage may vary, but it's nevertheless nice to have Soderbergh back in the race." Which is a bit of a pun, of course, seeing as how the film is about a heist pulled off during a Nascar event. It's not exactly Soderbergh's first heist film either, as he also directed the Ocean's 11-12-13 trilogy. "Heists" are of course an absolutely fantastic subject for exciting cinema. The bringing together of a team of experts, the plan, the execution, mutual respect and/or distrust, the clean (or messy) getaway... It's a mother lode...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 8/22/2017
- Screen Anarchy
The latest collaboration between Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon is a delicate, breezy and entirely endearing comic tale of love and kinship. Herewith I will admit to my shameful, total ignorance of the couple's previous features, L'iceberg (2005), Rumba (2008) and La fee (The Fairy; 2011, reviewed by our own Jim Tudor). They actually have been working together in film since at least 1994, when their short Merci Cupidon was completed. Per Cineuropa, they "met in Paris through their love of the circus" some 37 years ago and make their films in Belgium. I mention all that because Lost in Paris (Paris pieds nus) feels simultaneously fresh and also studied, like the latest chapter in a continuing, lighthearted epic that has little to do with...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 6/15/2017
- Screen Anarchy
This week’s episode of our podcast We Are Movie Geeks The Show is up! Hear Wamg’s Jim Batts and Tom Stockman talk movies. Our guest in the studio today is Jim Tudor, founder of ZekeFilm and reviewer for ScreenAnarchy. We’ll discuss the weekend box office and review Beauty And The Beast, Kong Skull Island, Land Of Mins, Sense Of An Ending, and The Zookeeper’S Wife. We’ll also discuss all of the movies showing locally including 1984, Streetcar Named Desire and Dead And Buried. We’ll also talk about retro movies coming out on Blu-ray.
Here’s the show. Have a listen:
http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/Wamg-3-20-54.mp3
The post This Week’s Wamg Podcast – Beauty And The Beast, Kong Skull Island, and More! appeared first on We Are Movie Geeks.
Here’s the show. Have a listen:
http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/Wamg-3-20-54.mp3
The post This Week’s Wamg Podcast – Beauty And The Beast, Kong Skull Island, and More! appeared first on We Are Movie Geeks.
- 3/20/2017
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
This week’s episode of our podcast We Are Movie Geeks The Show is up! Hear Wamg’s Jim Batts and Tom Stockman talk movies. Our guest in the studio this week is Jim Tudor, film critic for Film Anarchy and ZekeFilm. We’ll discuss the weekend box office and review Patriots Day, Silence, Monster Trucks, Tower, 20th Century Women, Paterson, and Live By Night. Ron Stevens will stop by and discuss his new documentary on Kshe. We’ll discuss all of the local movie events, then Michelle McCue will call in to talk about the top twelve at the box office and we’ll all choose our least favorite movies of 2016.
Here’s this week’s show. Have a listen:
http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/Wamg-1-16-54.mp3
The post This Week’s Wamg Podcast – Patriot Day, Silence, Monster Trucks, and More! appeared first on We Are Movie Geeks.
Here’s this week’s show. Have a listen:
http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/Wamg-1-16-54.mp3
The post This Week’s Wamg Podcast – Patriot Day, Silence, Monster Trucks, and More! appeared first on We Are Movie Geeks.
- 1/16/2017
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
This week sees the worldwide release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first in a series of stand-alone films taking place in the famed franchise's universe. According to our Jim Tudor it is quite good, and it has a big plus in having Darth Vader looming over everyone as the ultimate Bad Guy. Even better: Vader speaks, and he still has the voice of veteran actor James Earl Jones. And what a voice it is! The word "iconic" gets thrown around a lot on film websites, but James Earl Jones has the rare gift of making almost every role he gets an iconic one. And in the case of Darth Vader, who is one of the greatest movie villains in history, just his...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 12/16/2016
- Screen Anarchy
This week sees the premiere of Tate Taylor's The Girl on the Train, which our Jim Tudor kindly called "a manipulative wreck". However, it stars Emily Blunt, and that immediately decided who to choose for this week's quiz. For Emily Blunt is a great all-purpose actress, for whatever role you need: gritty drama victim, action love interest, hilariously bitchy enemy... she is just utterly dependable. So once again I'm going to use eleven close-ups of one of my favourite thespians to make a quiz. Click through the images and guess which movies or shows they're from. No competition, no prizes, just for fun. Try to see how far you get without using IMDb! And I'll post the answers next Thursday (or earlier if someone gets...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 10/7/2016
- Screen Anarchy
This week, Travis Knight's Kubo and the Two Strings appears in cinemas, and it carries a strong word-of-mouth, like the review by our Jim Tudor. The latest animation by Studio Laika, the film blends stop-motion puppetry with computer graphics, and it looks gorgeous. Its voice-cast is also not to be sneezed at, with the likes of Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaughey, George Takei... and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. While that last name will not ring a bell with everyone, rest assured you have seen him, probably often, and will recognize his face. Few people can look arrogant and cruel as well as Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, so combined with his martial arts skill (and stuntman job experience), he has been one of the standard go-to evil Asian-looking badguys in many,...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 8/19/2016
- Screen Anarchy
Currently in cinemas, David Lowery's remake of Pete's Dragon is a surprisingly decent piece of entertainment. As one of the reasons for this, Jim Tudor notes in his review that the film has a very solid cast, which includes the likes of Robert Redfort, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Wes Bentley. And, as the villain of sorts, Karl Urban. While he started acting as a teenage heartthrob on New Zealand television, his international movie career has moved him time and time again into genre. And if you're a fan of genre, that's a good thing, because, as stated by the Lord of the Rings actors in their commentary track for The Two Towers: every film gets better when Karl Urban is in it. While that does...
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[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 8/12/2016
- Screen Anarchy
I suppose the best thing that happened this past weekend, pop-culturally speaking, was that Ghostbusters finally came out, and more than lived up to both the original premise (bustin' ghosts!) and the new one (ladies bustin' ghosts!). To clarify, because clarification is disturbingly important on any article which hosts a comment section, this is not a review of the film. (Jim Tudor reviewed Ghostbusters for Screen Anarchy here. I also wrote about the way we discuss the film's haters last week; and Peter Gutierrez had a great take on our relationship with nostalgia, as it relates to the film, in his column.) I can't resist saying that I loved Ghostbusters '16 - yeah, actually loved it, much more so than I expected to - and...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 7/20/2016
- Screen Anarchy
This week’s episode of our podcast We Are Movie Geeks The Show is up! Hear Wamg’s Jim Batts and Tom Stockman and their special guest Jim Tudor from Twitch and ZekeFilm. We’ll discuss the weekend box office and review Alice Through The Looking Glass, Popstar Never Stop Never Stopping, Sunset Song, and Maggie’S Plan. Also, we’ll preview Conjuring 2, Now You See Me 2, and War Craft. We’ll then discuss screenings of films in St. Louis that include the 1945 version of Picture Of Dorian Gray, The Breakfast Club, and Deep Red.
Here’s this week’s show. Have a listen:
http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/Wamg-6-6-54.mp3
The post This Week’s Wamg Podcast – Popstar, Maggie’S Plan, and More! appeared first on We Are Movie Geeks.
Here’s this week’s show. Have a listen:
http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/Wamg-6-6-54.mp3
The post This Week’s Wamg Podcast – Popstar, Maggie’S Plan, and More! appeared first on We Are Movie Geeks.
- 6/6/2016
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
The Academy Awards do not have a category for ' best achievement in ridiculousness,' but if they did, Gods of Egypt would be a shoo-in next year. I don't mean the description "ridiculous" like Adam Sandler probably intends it in The Ridiculous Six, or as a slap in the face that some critics may have meant in their reviews of Gods of Egypt, or in the manner that I meant it when I described a trailer for the film as looking pretty ridiculous. Yet even at that point, I had to acknowledge that I couldn't keep my eyes off it. And that's how the movie played out for me. I was mindful of the reviews, including the one by our own Jim Tudor, in which...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 2/29/2016
- Screen Anarchy
The Academy Awards do not have a category for ' best achievement in ridiculousness,' but if they did, Gods of Egypt would be a shoo-in next year. I don't mean the description "ridiculous" like Adam Sandler probably intends it in The Ridiculous Six, or as a slap in the face that some critics may have meant in their reviews of Gods of Egypt, or in the manner that I meant it when I described a trailer for the film as looking pretty ridiculous. Yet even at that point, I had to acknowledge that I couldn't keep my eyes off it. And that's how the movie played out for me. I was mindful of the reviews, including the one by our own Jim Tudor, in which...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 2/29/2016
- Screen Anarchy
In the past few weeks, more and more people have been seeing Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, either by way of his 70mm roadshow screenings or otherwise. Reviews have been mixed (though our Jim Tudor loved it) but everyone agrees its cast is stellar. And one of the people in that cast is Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is also in Anomalisa. Time for a quiz about her! For Jennifer Jason Leigh is a great actress with a great taste in projects. Her resumeé includes many interesting and thought-provoking indies, and the odd fondly remembered classic as well. Just look at the directors she's worked with and you end up with a very interesting list indeed, and it's no surprise Quentin Tarantino is now on it...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 1/2/2016
- Screen Anarchy
This week, Spike Lee's new film Chi-Raq premieres wide, and according to our Jim Tudor it's a "wailing, wrenching, and downright bizarre screed on the crisis of gun violence", but also "an unforgettable experience" which has Spike Lee "re-emerging as his old firebrand self". Its cast is certainly impressive, and much more so because it includes the fantastic Angela Bassett, an actress who manages to bring strength, intelligence and class to every project she's in. And on top of all that she's funny, beautiful, and can sing a mean tune as well. Therefore, once again I'm going to use eleven pictures of one of my favourite thespians to make a quiz. Click through the images, and guess which movies or shows they're from. No competition,...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 12/4/2015
- Screen Anarchy
Thanks to our friends at Magnet Releasing, TwitchFilm readers now have an opportunity to win Skin Trade on Blu-ray! Skin Trade is an all out martial arts action film starring Tony Jaa, Dolph Lundgren (who also wrote the film's story), Michael Jai White, Ron Perlman, and Peter Weller, and it definitely delivers in the kicks-to-the-face department.Our Jim Tudor reviewed the film on it's initial release, and while he was dubious of the overall quality, he did have this to say about the action:There's jaw-cracking roundhouse action and as many explosions as the film's modest budget could afford. Lundgren, as the driving force in and behind this film, gladly utilizes the violent-justice protocol that Stallone locked down in First Blood, Part II, and later was nudged...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 10/23/2015
- Screen Anarchy
This week Cameron Crow's Aloha premieres, with - if nothing else - a stellar cast. Our Jim Tudor wasn't kind to the film, but note that in his review, he spent no vitriol on any of the actors. And in a supporting part you can spot Bill Murray, which is always nice, so we made him the subject of this week's quiz! When I think of Bill Murray I think of a comedian who has had more than a few stellar roles in films, but it wasn't until I cobbled this quiz together with Kurt, that I realized in just how many films he's been. There are many in which he just collects a check, there are many in which he clearly is having fun,...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 5/29/2015
- Screen Anarchy
I suppose the reason we continue to tolerate - all right, adore - the Fast and the Furious franchise is the degree to which it's simply so amiably palms-up about everything. It knows what it's about, and based on the box office results this weekend, what it's about is working just fine. So, in Furious 7 (read Jim Tudor's full review here), when we arrive at the oasis in the desert where an amateur street racing contest (or something) is being held, and a cloud of bikini-clad babes parts to reveal the race's starting-line girl, and we spy her ass and thong from underneath her nonexistent skirt, director James Wan doesn't just cut to it once; he cuts to it five times. From a low...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 4/8/2015
- Screen Anarchy
This week, UK-based children's icon Paddington gets his film released in the Us. Our Jim Tudor saw it and was, to his own surprise, rather charmed by it. And the "comically unrelenting villain" (Jim's words) of the piece is played by Nicole Kidman. What an excellent reason to have our weekly quiz be about her! Truth be told, while I always considered her to be a fine actress I was never really that big a fan. That is, until I saw some behind-the-scenes footage from Moulin Rouge, where she suddenly gets a very mischievous look and starts an Nsfw-joke with her costars during repetitions, causing everyone to erupt in laughter. I've liked her a lot more ever since, and it is the same kind of...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 1/16/2015
- Screen Anarchy
Landing the top spot in Twitch Film's Top 10 Movies of 2014 poll among our writers, Richard Linklater's Boyhood tells a concise story over a period of 12 years: a boy grows up. And now you can win one of two copies of the Blu-ray combo pack that we have available to give away, thanks to Paramount Home Media Distribution!Ellar Coltrane stars as the boy, with Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke as his parents, and Lorelai Linklater as his sister. As Jim Tudor wrote in the Top 10 Movies post: "Humbly precise, Richard Linklater's Boyhood might just be his masterpiece. It evidences an unprecedented go-for-the-gusto 12-year shoot, the unwavering commitment of all involved (special notice to Patricia Arquette, who secretly owns this movie), and an expertly...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 1/6/2015
- Screen Anarchy
(Tttt, or "Tudor's Twitchin' Travel Tours", is an occasional column that sets out to traverse the vast terrain of cinema, as experienced by yours truly, Jim Tudor, a filmmaker and guilded American film critic. This time I'm comparing and contrasting the big one-word titled films of fall 2013, Gravity and Rush. Strap in, friend - it's about to get centrifugal around here!) "Life in space is impossible." Ditto that when it comes to life as a 1970s Formula 1 racer. At least, anything resembling an ordinary life is impossible. As rarefied as they were, such guys wore their deathwishes like badges of honor, as they were incapable of doing anything else. This way of life stands in weird defiance to that of spacewalking astronauts -...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 10/17/2013
- Screen Anarchy
Werner Herzog sharing a director credit with Dmitry Vasyukov? That immediately raises the question: who did what? Our own Jim Tudor saw Happy People - A Year in the Taiga during its U.S. theatrical run earlier this year. He began his review by recapping the inherent appeal of the material: A snowmobile struggles over one frozen bump then another, his trusty dog keeping pace alongside without a problem. For as far as the eye can see, the terrain is snowcapped, wild, yet tranquil. The scraggly driver is a Russian trapper - a survivalist of the purest order, hailing from an existence devoid of electronic connectivity and indoor climate control. As the film points out, his snowmobile and his chainsaw are among the only modern conveniences...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 5/6/2013
- Screen Anarchy
Hey, it's another Tttt column, where I, Jim Tudor, take you along on one of Tudor's Twitchin' Travel Tours! For this one, we leave the planet via bubbleship, only to return to to find it an abandoned post-apocalyptic wreck. That's right, I saw Oblivion. Here are a few of my thoughts on it: Oblivion (d. Joseph Kosinski, 2013. USA) When the rock band Eve 6 sang of spinning "'round to a beautiful oblivion" in the late 1990s hit song "Inside Out," the reference was to a heart in a blender. As kinda grotesque as that imagery is, the emotional turmoil it's meant to evoke is entirely relatable to many of us in the past decade-plus. The intensity of darkness, dread and lament in popular culture...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 4/21/2013
- Screen Anarchy
We've covered Prometheus extensively here prior and during its theatrical release, with three very different reviews from our own Brian Clark, Ard Vijn, and Jim Tudor. The consensus (if there is one): it's a mess, but it's a beautiful mess. Fox released this expansive four-disc set recently which includes the 3D version of the film on Blu-ray, a second Blu-ray with the 2D feature, commentary, and extras, and a third Blu-ray packed with additional content. Plus, there's a DVD copy of the film along with a digital code. In any event. key takeaway from the collection of special features in Fox's Prometheus Blu-ray is that from the outset, everyone assembled knew that the Alien prequel (or "parallel" as screenwriter Damon Lindelof calls it) might be...
- 10/24/2012
- Screen Anarchy
Brian De Palma has been written off before, and it may be that Passion, his remake of Alain Corneau's Crime d'amour (Aka Love Crime), is nothing more than a job for hire. Or, perhaps it's an opportunity for an old dog to show the kids that he's still got a few tricks up his sleeve. Obviously, I'm hoping for the latter. The original film, starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier, was a perfectly fine thriller with a couple of neat twists. In Jim Tudor's review from last fall, when it had a limited theatrical release in the U.S., he questioned whether a remake was even needed, since the film was successful on its own terms. The Tiff program notes claim: "De Palma follows...
- 8/23/2012
- Screen Anarchy
Rachel Weisz inhabits the depressed mind and broken soul of Hester Collyer, a woman on the edge of despair, in Terence Davies' The Deep Blue Sea. Hester is married to an older, distinguished, and very proper gentleman (Simon Russell Beale) in post-wwii England. She enjoys a materially comfortable lifestyle, but it's a hermetic existence, its boundaries enforced by the conventions of society. She begins an affair with a high-spirited former Raf pilot (Tom Hiddleston), but he has limitations of his own. The affair becomes a stranglehold. As my colleague Jim Tudor observed in his review of the theatrical release: The Deep Blue Sea is simply, perhaps appropriately, remote like Hester's judge husband. The vibe is a catch-22. On one hand the hardened emotional atmosphere...
- 7/26/2012
- Screen Anarchy
We don't normally go out of our way to bash Hollywood product, but in the case of Project X, a nauseating 90-minute beer commercial that caused me to feel physically ill, we're making an exception. As it happens, three Twitch writers saw the film at advance screenings across North America earlier this week: Jim Tudor, Jason Gorber, and myself. And we all had similar reactions. Rather than publish three similar, individual reviews, we've collected together our capsule thoughts on one of the worst movies of this young year. Our founder-in-chief, Todd Brown, suggested that we present our thoughts in orderly fashion; thus, our first ever "Cavalcade of Hate." First out of the block, let's hear from Jim Tudor. Ugh. And ugh again. This utterly...
- 3/2/2012
- Screen Anarchy
"It's no fun wearing my Tintin shirt now that the masses know who he is." The drawing over that caption is superfluous. Still, the cartoon in this week's New Yorker nicely sums up the shift in Tintin's status in the Us since the release of Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin — his face has migrated from imported T-shirts to dog food ads.
As with another 3D spectacle currently in theaters, Pina, we've already had two roundups on Spielberg's Tintin, the first in October, an entry that kicked off with initial reactions to the film's premiere and eventually segued into more considered reviews in the British and European press, and the second in November, an entry gathering takes from the Tintinologists and reviews from AFI Fest. So I'll try to keep it brief in this third go-round, focusing more on Hergé than Spielberg, beginning with Charles McGrath's introduction in the video embedded above.
As with another 3D spectacle currently in theaters, Pina, we've already had two roundups on Spielberg's Tintin, the first in October, an entry that kicked off with initial reactions to the film's premiere and eventually segued into more considered reviews in the British and European press, and the second in November, an entry gathering takes from the Tintinologists and reviews from AFI Fest. So I'll try to keep it brief in this third go-round, focusing more on Hergé than Spielberg, beginning with Charles McGrath's introduction in the video embedded above.
- 12/29/2011
- MUBI
Scott Weinberg has tallied the votes from 20 Movies.com contributors and come up with a top 20. #1: Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive.
"Refn's pulp fantasia — with the iconic Ryan Gosling sporting a cheesy scorpion jacket, a toothpick and a lack of dialogue unrivaled since Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns — reminded me just how much I love movies," writes Sean Burns. "Refn's boldly artificial flourishes, graphic violence and swoony romanticism conjured an alternate universe I adored basking in, over and over. Throw in Albert Brooks as the villain, and I don't want to admit how many times I went back to see it again."
Also in the Philadelphia Weekly, Matt Prigge, whose #2 is Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret, on his #1, House of Tolerance: "Like Margaret, Bertrand Bonello's dreamy look at a tony, turn-of-the-century Parisian brothel was initially hated, with some at Cannes calling it the fest's worst. It fared better at Toronto,...
"Refn's pulp fantasia — with the iconic Ryan Gosling sporting a cheesy scorpion jacket, a toothpick and a lack of dialogue unrivaled since Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns — reminded me just how much I love movies," writes Sean Burns. "Refn's boldly artificial flourishes, graphic violence and swoony romanticism conjured an alternate universe I adored basking in, over and over. Throw in Albert Brooks as the villain, and I don't want to admit how many times I went back to see it again."
Also in the Philadelphia Weekly, Matt Prigge, whose #2 is Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret, on his #1, House of Tolerance: "Like Margaret, Bertrand Bonello's dreamy look at a tony, turn-of-the-century Parisian brothel was initially hated, with some at Cannes calling it the fest's worst. It fared better at Toronto,...
- 12/29/2011
- MUBI
"Big gestures are common currency in Cameron Crowe country," begins Vadim Rizov at GreenCine Daily, and that's the gist, too, of Sam Adams's piece for Slate: "He's made bad movies, but never a bad trailer." Vadim: "John Cusack holding a boombox over his head in Say Anything..., Jerry Maguire's much-quoted romantic highlights ('You had me at hello'), an unironically lovestruck-and-desperate run alongside a moving bus in Almost Famous. Crowe openly states his method in We Bought a Zoo: 'All you need is 20 seconds of insane courage,' dad Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) tells lovestruck son Dylan (Colin Ford). 'And I promise you, something great will come of it.' This is both a baldly stated stab at future quotability and a declaration of Crowe's full investment: every time his characters do something outsized and cornball, he's the one hoping a great moment rather than a fiasco will emerge from it.
- 12/28/2011
- MUBI
We'll begin with a couple of ringing endorsements and then add a qualifier or two, but all in all, most critics are pleased to be surprised.
"Take an aging star often viewed as a weirdo," begins Salon's Andrew O'Hehir, "a director who's never made a live-action film and the fourth installment of a 15-year-old movie franchise whose roots go back to 1960s television. What do you get? Well, it certainly could have been a total disaster, or an awkward nostalgia exercise, but instead Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is something even more unlikely: the most exciting action flick of the year, by a huge margin. Director Brad Bird brings all the wit, style and imagination of his animated films (Ratatouille, The Incredibles and The Iron Giant) to this slick secret-agent techno-fantasy. As for 49-year-old Tom Cruise, he's surely ready for a comeback after weathering the worst publicity of his celebrity career.
"Take an aging star often viewed as a weirdo," begins Salon's Andrew O'Hehir, "a director who's never made a live-action film and the fourth installment of a 15-year-old movie franchise whose roots go back to 1960s television. What do you get? Well, it certainly could have been a total disaster, or an awkward nostalgia exercise, but instead Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is something even more unlikely: the most exciting action flick of the year, by a huge margin. Director Brad Bird brings all the wit, style and imagination of his animated films (Ratatouille, The Incredibles and The Iron Giant) to this slick secret-agent techno-fantasy. As for 49-year-old Tom Cruise, he's surely ready for a comeback after weathering the worst publicity of his celebrity career.
- 12/17/2011
- MUBI
Vera Farmiga's Higher Ground "admirably tries, on a minuscule budget, to evoke the spirit of American cinema from 35 years ago: the age of Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall, an era much more hospitable to serious roles for women than the current one." Melissa Anderson in the Voice: "As reported in a New York Times Magazine cover story on the actress in 2006 (three years before her Oscar-nominated performance in Up in the Air), Farmiga has expressed her disgust with the roles offered her by setting scripts on fire: 'I stack up all those crass female characters, all those utterly ordinary women, all those hundreds and hundreds of parts that have no substance or meaning and turn them into a blazing pyre.' It's a shame, then, that Higher Ground never really ignites."
Farmiga plays "Corinne, a Midwest rural woman who embraces a hippie-inflected but paternalistic evangelical community with her high...
Farmiga plays "Corinne, a Midwest rural woman who embraces a hippie-inflected but paternalistic evangelical community with her high...
- 8/26/2011
- MUBI
[And we have our winners: James Tran and Charlotte (aka @m0neypenny007), and these lucky winners have been notified. Thanks so much for reading and participating!] The pill-popping, mind-enhancing thriller is coming to DVD and Blu-Ray on July 19th, so we thought we'd offer you a no-brainer contest for one of two Blu-Ray copies of the film, which got some pretty positive reviews from our own Jim Tudor, Kwenton Bellette, and Scott Weinberg. First off, here's the synopsis for the film: Bradley Cooper (The A-Team) and two-time Academy-Award® winner Robert De Niro, star in this provocative and action packed-thriller with unlimited surprising twists. Eddie Morra (Cooper), a burnt-out writer, discovers a top-secret pill that unlocks 100% of his brain's capacity. He instantly acquires mind-bending talents...
- 7/19/2011
- Screen Anarchy
From the vantage point of my mainstream movie beat, 2010 was a mixed bag. Maybe a bit schizophrenic, sometimes even a little backwards. (2010 gave us a movie called "Babies" and another called "Grown-Ups". Guess which one was more mature?) Reality-benders like "Catfish" and "Inception" challenged our perceptions of what is true, while the 3-D phenomenon, for the most part, challenged our resistance to headaches. But all of that aside, in the big picture sense, was it really any different than any other movie year? I don't really think so. Like past recent years, the naysayers were out in force mid-June, denouncing 2010 as the worst movie year since, oh, 1887. But such moaning was premature, if not completely unwarranted. After all, of the fifty-plus 2010 films that I personally was able to see this year, most of them had at least some sort of redeeming value. So, looking back, we can see (in 3-D!
- 12/29/2010
- Screen Anarchy
3-D took off. Reality benders bent the box office. And Stallone returned to the top. Yessiree, 2010 did offer some noticeable trends. But perhaps above all, Hollywood's continual nostalgia obsession went officially 1980s crazy. "A Nightmare on Elm Street", "The Karate Kid", "The A-Team", "Predator", and even "Tron" all made comebacks, to name a few. But none of these are the most interesting to compare and contrast. For that, I give you Oliver Stone's "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps", and MGM's one-time swan song, "Hot Tub Time Machine".
The burning question is: How the heck do these two films measure up to one another? Now, it can be revealed: "Wall Street" gets the nod for Best Re-emergence of an Eighties Icon (Gordon Gecko beating out John Cusack's return to his early career teen comedy persona), although "Hot Tub" gets the edge for Best Use of the Talking Head's "This Must...
The burning question is: How the heck do these two films measure up to one another? Now, it can be revealed: "Wall Street" gets the nod for Best Re-emergence of an Eighties Icon (Gordon Gecko beating out John Cusack's return to his early career teen comedy persona), although "Hot Tub" gets the edge for Best Use of the Talking Head's "This Must...
- 12/29/2010
- Screen Anarchy
The response to the Nimrod Antal-directed Predators was pretty tepid around these parts, with our own James Marsh and Jim Tudor giving it a resounding, "eh." Having had a chance to watch the recent blu-ray release myself, I can see where the enthusiasm gap came from with this one. While in no way particularly bad--it verges on having a couple of honest-to-god good moments--Predators never really figures out how to make the most of the titular villains as a story engine, and the limited scope leaves you having a hard time remembering what you just saw.
The movie is a pseudo-sequel to the Schwarzenegger classic, this time dropping eight killers on an alien planet used as a game preserve for the Predators. The killers--soldiers, mercenaries, and/or criminals must learn to work together to overcome the trio of Predators stalking them through the hostile alien environment. Adrien Brody leads...
The movie is a pseudo-sequel to the Schwarzenegger classic, this time dropping eight killers on an alien planet used as a game preserve for the Predators. The killers--soldiers, mercenaries, and/or criminals must learn to work together to overcome the trio of Predators stalking them through the hostile alien environment. Adrien Brody leads...
- 11/12/2010
- Screen Anarchy
[This review actually written by Jim Tudor but something went wonky with his post ...]
The genetic experimentation-based premise of "Splice" may brand the film as a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller, but don't be fooled. "Splice", a taut and effective modern horror story, is actually about overly controlling parenting, and the consequences thereof. Despite its less than stellar trailers that managed to unintentionally sell it as something derivative of the 1995 exploitation dud "Species", "Splice" manages to correct just about everything that film did wrong. Driven by the on-screen talent of ever-quirky Oscar winner Adrien Brody and indie film darling Sarah Polley, what we have here is a top-tier, edgy character-based revision of the classic "Frankenstein" story. It is also one of the biggest surprises of the movie year so far.
Directed with fluid sure-handedness by Vincenzo Natali (of "Cube" fame; also co-writer of this film's screenplay), "Splice" is never dull, and is almost always fully engaging, even if most of the scenes take place in sickly-lit science labs or a rustic barn,...
The genetic experimentation-based premise of "Splice" may brand the film as a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller, but don't be fooled. "Splice", a taut and effective modern horror story, is actually about overly controlling parenting, and the consequences thereof. Despite its less than stellar trailers that managed to unintentionally sell it as something derivative of the 1995 exploitation dud "Species", "Splice" manages to correct just about everything that film did wrong. Driven by the on-screen talent of ever-quirky Oscar winner Adrien Brody and indie film darling Sarah Polley, what we have here is a top-tier, edgy character-based revision of the classic "Frankenstein" story. It is also one of the biggest surprises of the movie year so far.
Directed with fluid sure-handedness by Vincenzo Natali (of "Cube" fame; also co-writer of this film's screenplay), "Splice" is never dull, and is almost always fully engaging, even if most of the scenes take place in sickly-lit science labs or a rustic barn,...
- 6/4/2010
- Screen Anarchy
Martin Scorsese is commonly referred to as the greatest living American film director - even at times when he doesn't quite deserve it. To be fair, Scorsese is considerably prolific, involved not just with feature film directing, but also working as a television series producer and pop-cultural documentarian, as well as being a film restoration proponent and historian. Indeed, I have to admit that in recent years I've become more of a fan of Scorsese's work as a film historian than as a director. That's not to sell his directing work short - "The Departed" ranked as my #1 film of that year. But when compared to his volatile and vibrant earlier classics, including "Mean Streets", "Taxi Driver", and "GoodFellas", (all starring Robert De Niro) later works such as "Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator" (all starring Leonardo DiCaprio) have a certain remoteness that, deliberate or not, often creates a cold disconnect for viewers.
- 2/19/2010
- Screen Anarchy
As I'm sure more than one critic will attest, Universal's remake of "The Wolfman" has bite. Its gothic heart is certainly in the right place, even if it is flawed in a number of areas. That may not sound like rabid praise, necessarily, but those still trying to shake off Universal's previous attempt at re-igniting their monsters legacy, 2004's "Van Helsing", should recognize it as a sure sign of improvement. Despite the werewolf's top tier status in the big three of prototypical monster archetypes (along side of Dracula and the Frankenstein monster), this marks the first time Universal has remade 1941's "The Wolf Man".
Considering how dicey and longwinded the production "The Wolfman" has apparently been, what with its initial director, the visionary Mark Romanak, departing some time ago, and ultimately replaced with working director Joe Johnston, then reshoots and release date juggling, it's truly a wonder it's as good as it is.
Considering how dicey and longwinded the production "The Wolfman" has apparently been, what with its initial director, the visionary Mark Romanak, departing some time ago, and ultimately replaced with working director Joe Johnston, then reshoots and release date juggling, it's truly a wonder it's as good as it is.
- 2/12/2010
- Screen Anarchy
Sheesh, another list! At the end of every year, the need to do an annual best-of movie round-up seems to sneak up on me. The fact that it's now the end of the decade snuck on me all the more. In compiling this admittedly quick list, I looked over all my qualifying year-end lists, and re-evaluated where necessary. I tried to consider the films I saw in the greater sociological context of the decade itself - their effects on it, and what they have to say about it. At the same time, I also tried to include some personal selections that probably wouldn't make other such lists, but were important to me. Please keep in mind that i could not see everything, and that my beat around here is the mainstream theatrical films. I managed to narrow it down to twenty films, ranking the first ten. So here it, my best of the decade,...
- 12/31/2009
- Screen Anarchy
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