Writer-director Vincenzo Natali sets up the story in his new film Splice to head down some dark, twisty roads. The second most surprising aspect of the film is that he willingly follows through, taking routes to their logical, if decisively … Continue reading Beautiful queen with your beautiful gene
Sequels invariably inspire comparisons, weighing the merits of what’s flickering on the screen against the adventures that came before. This seems to be especially true for superhero sequels, maybe because there’s an echo of the comic reading experience, where every … Continue reading Everything you say is like iron; it smashes me up but it’s brittle inside
Writer-director Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to the splendid creature feature The Host finds him moving from the realm of Ishiro Honda to that of Alfred Hitchcock. It could be argued that he’s still tracking monsters and assessing the damage that they … Continue reading You can stand up or you can run, you and I both know what you’ve done
Noah Baumbach has certainly been going to some dark places with his most recent efforts, at least his most recent directorial efforts. He’s also been collaborating with Wes Anderson, co-writing the screenplays on The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and … Continue reading Let’s get together and talk about the modern age
By now it should come as no surprise to anyone that’s paid even cursory attention to these digital dispatches that I like the way Martin Scorsese makes movies. I concede this in advance not to cast doubt upon my opinion … Continue reading I’m on an island and I’ve got nowhere to swim
Oh, it’s a howler. Like a lot of members of a couple, the Hallmark holiday that occurred this past weekend was an excuse to venture into a movie theater. While there were potential horrors aplenty waiting to be strung up … Continue reading Got a curse we cannot lift, shines when the sunset shifts
It’s hard to deny the emotional wallop built right in to Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire. Set in 1987, the film tells the story of an overweight black teenager living in poverty with her abusive mother in … Continue reading Now Howard the Duck and Mr. Stress both stayed trapped in a world that they never made
It’s hard to see Nine as anything other than a retreat of sorts for director Rob Marshall. He followed up his Oscar-feted Chicago–a film you may recall that I quite like–with an attempt to branch out into prestige fare that … Continue reading On the black Fellini sails, tattered rags that hangs on nails reminds me
There have already been plenty of words devoted to all the ways in which Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air is especially timely, so let’s instead consider the elements that make it timeless. Yes, the profession of the film’s main … Continue reading Trying to fly away might have been your first mistake
Since at least 1989’s The Abyss, James Cameron has expanded the technical limits of cinema with each successive film. He’s gone to special effects artisans with a reasonable assessment of their capabilities and explained, probably with some degree of forcefulness, … Continue reading So break a leg now, soon all the world will be a stage
Coffee for Two 