Monthly Archives: December 2012
Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997)
Five films later, Jackie Brown still occupies a unique place in the Quentin Tarantino oeuvre. Despite its Blaxploitation homages, it’s still his most recent film that can’t be qualified as exploitation, and it is his only feature aside from Reservoir Dogs in which the story feels not like an after-thought but as an irreplaceable part […]
Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)
Django Unchained is, in many ways, a re-telling of Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino’s previous film, re-set in pre-Civil War America. A powerful and violent force on the side of good (Christoph Waltz, who played the opposite force in Basterds) and a tortured and vengeful soul (Jamie Foxx’s titular Django) share a common goal in wishing to […]
Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater, 1995)
With Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater caught lightning in a bottle. Never mind that he would catch the same bolt nine years later with Before Sunset and is trying his luck for a third time with the upcoming Before Midnight; that Before Sunrise can unfold so naturally with no plot and speak so honestly over conversations […]
A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg, 2011)
David Cronenberg has spent decades making films that explore the body and play with sexuality and gender, from men turning into flies to women sucking blood with an orifice in their armpit to people getting off on car crashes that mangle bodies. With that in mind, a movie about the thinkers who have become household […]
The Secret World Of Arrietty (Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2012)
[NOTE: The Secret World of Arrietty was originally released as Arrietty in Japan in 2010. However, because the version I watched and, technically speaking, am reviewing, is the United States dub released in 2012, I have listed it as a 2012 film) Many of Hayao Miyazaki’s films focus on the duality of two worlds—Chihiro’s reality […]
The Loneliest Planet (Julia Loktev, 2012)
The Loneliest Planet is a movie that could have been made by Kelly Reichardt, if she decided to make Meek’s Cutoff in the mountains or by Nuri Bilge Ceylan if he were more interested in relationships and interaction than by introspection. It’s a slow-burner with hardly any dialogue and even less actually happening. Only one […]
On The Road (Walter Salles, 2012)
My review of On The Road is up over at The Film Stage. I saw this one a couple months ago and wrote the review later that night and the next day, but it’s going up now to better align with the release date. Anyway, click through and click the link below to read my […]
Zero Dark Thirty
Hello readers, On Monday Night I attended a screening of Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. It was excellent, as expected, but all this talk initiated by Greg Greenwald (of The Guardian UK) about the film glorifying torture is making me take a different angle. So while I likely will not have a traditional review of […]
The Kid With A Bike (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, 2012)
When I first saw Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes’ The Son about a year ago, it was with a sense of stifled appreciation. I couldn’t argue that it was not without merit, from the memorable sound of wood scraping together to the tight, focused long-takes, but I also found it a bit too obtuse, even a […]
Take This Waltz (Sarah Polley, 2012)
Sarah Polley made her name as an actress, notably with her two Atom Egoyan collaborations, Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, before trying her directorial hand with 2006’s Away From Her (executive produced by Egoyan), which found its place on the top-10 lists of many critics. The follow-up, Take This Waltz shows that Polley has inherited […]
Forrest In Focus: Critical Film Reviews 