Sigmund Freud, that veritable master of the mind and erstwhile liaison betwixt the dream world and our own (is there really such a hard distinction between the two?), said, “Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.” In a world where dreams are entered into volitionally, like remarkable virtual reality chambers, anything [...]
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 [...]
Few know how to do psychological thrill rides like Scorsese. Evoking (if not channelling) 1991’s Cape Fear, Shutter Island manages to pull off another thriller of extensive scope. Both films allow the score and the camera to set the tone almost entirely in many scenes, in others stripping the score away and returning to conventional camera [...]
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 [...]
We know the writings, but few of us know the man behind them, the pen that wrote some of the most beloved and respected books in the Canon of Humanity, among them, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Unfortunately, the man was caught between two worlds late in life, his family and his Movement, the Tolstoyans. Michael [...]
Famous men and women live epic lives, it seems, in one way or another, if only for the impact they’ve had on humanity both during and, if not more importantly, after their own lifetimes. Many of these notables received little approbation during their lives (in some cases none or, worse, public censure). But they wrote, or [...]
You can probably think of several movies that would qualify as a recent quality action flick. Or a recent quality dramedy. But when was the last time you saw a recent quality farce? Yes, a farce. That rare comedy which lampoons with far-flung characterizations and far-fetched situations, many times very political in nature. In the [...]
Darkness pervades The White Ribbon. Shot wholly in black-and-white, it feels instantly like a classic from a much earlier era. Simultaneously, the camera both hides and reveals, building unabated tension throughout the film, giving it the distinctive quality of the horror of a Hitchcock and the innocence of a Chaplin. The juxtaposition of a secluded [...]
With The Hurt Locker, we were offered a visceral window into the experience of the current war in the Middle East. The addition of The Messenger makes this an indispensable neorealistic pairing of films depicting the toils of war both on the sands abroad and at home, on our own front porches. Whereas The Hurt Locker takes place [...]