06 Jan The Hateful Eight: an SMS review
special guest appearance in grey bubbles by McNutt Against the Music ...
29 Aug Blu-ray diary: the BFI’s tasty answer to Criterion’s Rossellini/Bergman box
For the 100th anniversary of Ingrid Bergman's birth—my 100th blog post. Thanks to all my readers and for all the positive feedback I've received in the past three years. I just re-upped with my hosting service so I guess you're in for another year of...
26 Jan Soderbergh’s 2001
The biggest film-nerd thrill of this young year came and went in a week. Steven Soderbergh's unauthorized edit of 2001—shortening it by about 40 minutes, and making several other substantial changes—was posted on his site on January 14 and gone by sometime on the 21st. "The exercise amounts almost...
08 Sep Iraqi Odyssey (Samir): first look
Twelve years on from the 2002 documentary Forget Baghdad—an essential, if not widely known, film about the tragic dismantling of the Jewish community of Iraq—director Samir is back with the story of his own Iraqi family's global diaspora. As with Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell, we have a...
07 Sep The Face of an Angel (Michael Winterbottom): first look
Instead of a theory of what really transpired in the death of Meredith Kercher, and what role if any was played in that by Amanda Knox, The Face of an Angel comes at us as a deconstruction of how the media represents such a story. But...
21 Dec first thoughts: Django Unchained
Three years ago in The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg called Inglorious Basterds "a story of emotionally uncomplicated, physically threatening, non-morally-anguished Jews dealing out spaghetti-Western justice to Nazis." From the trailers for Django Unchained I was tempted to think that Quentin Tarantino had simply swapped in a...
17 Sep review: Barbara (Christian Petzold)
Calling this film "quiet" or "restrained" would be factual enough, but somehow it doesn't do justice to how truly engaging the story is. Nina Hoss is perfectly cast as the eponymous character, managing the tricky task of seeming both put-upon and above it all. Punished for...
14 Sep review: The Attack (Ziad Doueiri)
A successful Palestinian surgeon (Ali Suliman, in a compellingly restrained performance), respected and honoured by the Jewish Israeli medical establishment, and working in a Tel Aviv hospital, sees his life's foundation drop out from under him when his wife perpetrates a suicide bombing that kills...
13 Sep review: Far From Afghanistan (John Gianvito with Travis Wilkerson, Jon Jost, Minda Martin, Soon-Mi Yoo)
This is a very quick-hit review of a complex film project that is explicated far more thoroughly by Cinema Scope, so I will just focus on a few key points. I think I have a very clear bias when it comes to films about war, and...
12 Sep review: Zaytoun (Eran Riklis)
Some quick thoughts about Zaytoun. Criticizing this film feels like kicking a puppy. How can you not enjoy what is possibly the unlikeliest buddy-road-movie pairing ever, when an orphaned Palestinian boy (Abdallah El Akal, who could not be more loved by the camera) and a...
- 1
- 2