Purveyor of fine coffee-table movies Godfrey Reggio (Powaqqatsi, Koyaanisqatsi) brings us a highfaultin' technical exercises that asks the question, "Since humanity spends so much of its time staring at a computer screen, why not turn things around, situate the audience inside a laptop, and force them to look out? The …
Halfway through her debut presentation, an aspiring young drag performer (Héctor Medina) is suckerpunched by a member of the audience, who turns out to be the recently sprung father (Jorge Perugorría) he never knew. From here, director Paddy Breathnach and screenwriter Mark O’Halloran call into play Hollywood’s tested and proven …
Signal the booth announcer: “Today, on the Al Jazeera After School Special, a man’s world as seen through the eyes of a 10-year-old girl. Waad Mohammed stars as Wadjda, the tyke Jonesing for a bike, in this feel-good triumph of the human spirit.” Wadjda had the makings of a masterpiece...in …
It takes a strong couple to weather life’s battery of unfolding events, particularly when the topic shifts from the petty (pubic hair on a cake of Ivory) to what to do when one’s ex, and the absentee father of their son, is given a death sentence. If Chito refers to …
Mark Rylance stars as an insouciant Magistrate With No Name, stationed at the outpost of an unspecified border, whose only brush with justice involves a case of pig-poaching. Light carved through a square in the Magistrate’s ceiling heralded a talented eye behind the lens, but nothing prepared me for shadow-sculptor …
Telejournalist Peter Nicks hired a camera crew to catalog a day in the life of the bustling emergency room of Oakland’s Highland Hospital. Have you ever been to an ER? Waiting times are interminable and tempers fray as uninsured patients lose their patience. What else is new? It’s being billed …
A Manhattan Lawyer (Bryan Cranston) has an Alice moment when his evening commute ends with a raccoon coaxing him up into the family’s storage loft over the garage, where he spends the next few years looking on in delight as his wife and two daughters agonize over his whereabouts. Even …
James Marsh’s Man on Wire — the superb Academy Award-winning documentary account of the death-defying stroll that high-wire artist Philippe Petit took between the Twin Towers back in 1974 — is given a fantasy thrill-ride makeover by Hollywood motion capture champion Robert Zemeckis (Flight). Saddled with a French accent, Michigan …
Liam Neeson’s latest actioner is born in cliches — a pre-credit flashback explains how a career cop becomes an unlicensed P.I. (and sober) after a shootout results in the accidental death of a child — and fatigued by even harder-to-swallow secondary characters. Credibility crumples the moment our hero begins to …
A kid with trouble for a father and a father whose son wants nothing to do with him fill the gaps in each other’s lives in this tough but tender road picture. “Always know where the cue ball will wind up after the shot,” says pool hustler Cal (Jeffrey Dean …
Two hours of killing Jews to awaken audiences to the heretofore unheard of notion that Nazi's committed atrocious acts. Based on a true story (so it must be good). In an attempt to help remove every Jew from Budapest, a couple of young Hungarians get their hands on SS uniforms …
The 20th Century Fox fanfare (with CinemaScope addendum) is performed on jungle drums and didgeridoo. Sometimes, a film earns points even before the opening credits hit the screen; other times, a variation on a studio logo is as avant garde as it gets. War's two predecessors handily proved the gimmick …
Ten reasons not to see this film: 1. The Weinstein Company annually likes to dangle Holocaust-themed films (Life is Beautiful, The Reader, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Good, Defiance) in front of Academy voters. Every awards season, Harvey Weinstein leads the charge with, “We must never forget...there’s still plenty …