Metaphors often work for their ability to succinctly capture and elucidate a complex idea, employing more accessible terminology and concepts than their perhaps obscure counterparts for which they stand. Too stretch a metaphor to its logical conclusion might come across as tedious or, worse, a dead horse beating contest. The inquisitive conceit of Cold Souls [...]
The Coen Brothers are a truly dynamic duo. Wielding wit, charisma, and an invigorating spirit, they deftly create films in which the story often unfolds both dramatically and comically, revealing the dual nature of existence. A Serious Man tells the tragically comic story of Larry Gopnik, a professor whose life, at times both enviable and its [...]
Before anybody became somebody, they were practically a nobody. That’s the understanding, anyway, and Coco Before Chanel is an extended case-in-point. However, if it exemplifies the previous adage, it also stands testament to the power of two things, unrelated but connected: benefactors and femininity. Though “everyone must start somewhere,” it helps to have someone eventually [...]
It’s said that the worst possible trauma a parent can experience is outliving their children, and, therefore, burying them, mourning their loss, and living out the rest of their lives with a gaping emotional wound, wrapped with new tourniquets each day, never completely healing, never fully returning to that approximation of wholeness towards which we [...]
Horrors occur all around the globe, under varying levels of spotlight beams. Some, however, deserve (to use the term pejoratively) much more exposure than they have ever received previously. One such macabre violation of dignity is the dolphin genocide taking place in Taijii, Japan, where a group sanctioned by the government is herding, trapping, and killing [...]
Alice Sebold wrote a gripping, affecting novel about a young girl whose life is ended far too soon by a man with a devastating and interminable itch: he rapes and murders young girls. Peter Jackson, whose extensive resume includes the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, is an adept director, a man with visions of [...]
A film set in the 30’s in France, Faubourg 36, or Paris 36, feels like a film actually made in the 30’s. The costumes and the outdoor sets have a contrived artificiality to them, the whole town seems within arm’s reach, and the quality of the shots are more often than not reassuringly melodramatic, in a [...]
A blend of politics, the Mafia, and concentrated, modern, aristocratic Italian culture, Il Divo is a biopic on Giulio Andreotti, seven time Prime Minister of Italy, whose life is shrouded in secrecy and ambiguity, with plenty of wit to boot. Paolo Sorrentino writes and directs this calculated and highly entertaining film, a product of keen foresight and [...]
A middle-aged, weathered performer who’s down on his luck, strapped for cash, and reaching for the bottle. Haven’t we seen this before? We have. This film wishes it was The Wrestler from 2008. It can’t be The Wrestler for one very simple reason: it tries way too hard to please everybody. Nothing is that hard [...]
Imagine the Godfather trilogy set almost entirely in a prison in France. You now have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Un prophète, both in substance and tonality. This visceral epic depicts the harsh realities of both prison life and the painful truth of being involved in the mafia, whether within or beyond [...]