Monthly Archives: August 2013
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (David Lowery, 2013)
Even if you haven’t seen St. Nick, David Lowery’s first feature film, there is a good chance you are more familiar with his work than you would initially expect. Lowery edited two of 2013’s best films so far, Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color and Amy Seimetz’ Sun Don’t Shine, and also wrote Pit Stop, a SXSW […]
Short Term 12 (Destin Cretton, 2013)
When One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was adapted in 1975, cynicism was at its peak. A de facto defeat in an unwanted Vietnam War was compounded by the resignation of Richard Nixon. Attitudes toward authority were skeptical, to say the least, and if you ask the more honest of those that lived through it, […]
Touki Bouki (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1973)
Certainly the least seen film in Sight & Sound’s most recent poll of the greatest films of all time, Touki Bouki, Djibril Diop Mambéty’s directorial debut is tied for 93rd with Un Chien Andalou, The Seventh Seal, and Yi Yi, among others. The film borrows heavily from the early works of Jean-Luc Godard in its […]
Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)
Weekend might be Jean-Luc Godard’s first surrealist film. Don’t be fooled, though; in many ways, it’s classic ‘60s Godard. Emily Bronte makes an appearance, there are references to great films of yesteryear, and the film’s characters remind us (and themselves) that they are in a film, not reality. But it also is an anarchist’s dream […]
Antares (Götz Spielmann, 2004/2005)
Like Amores Perros and 21 Grams before it (and Crash just a month after it), Antares is a film about interconnectedness that relies heavily on a car accident. Antares begins with its crash and then takes us to a time before it where Eva (Petra Morzé), a content nurse with a husband and daughter, begins […]
Elysium (Neil Blomkamp, 2013)
I firmly believe that in any story, no matter how inconceivable, you must give the creator his/her premise. Likewise, arguing that something does not work because the characters act in a way that appears stupid to us says nothing about the actual message being conveyed. With that said, Elysium, the follow-up to Neil Blomkamp’s passable […]
We Need To Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, 2011)
We Need To Talk About Kevin is a radical film for long enough to suggest that the whole film will be radical. After a glimpse of Eva’s (Tilda Swinton) life before motherhood that depicts her either as a loose-spirit and aims for irony (she is covered in blood-red tomato juice, with an emphasis on “blood”) […]
Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013)
Make no mistake, just because Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine starts with a gag does not mean it’s a comedy. I have only seen a handful of Allen’s films, but Blue Jasmine is easily the least comedic of them. When there are laughs, they are not so much due to literary and artistic references (as they […]
Metropolitan (Whit Stillman, 1990)
Looking back on Whit Stillman’s directorial debut Metropolitan, it is clear that reports of the death of the urban haute bourgeoisie—upper class, rich snobs, spoiled kids, whatever you want to call them—have been greatly exaggerated. Perhaps because of all its intentional witticisms, it’s hard to see Metropolitan as anything besides a Manhattan-esque satire, but Stillman […]
Forrest In Focus: Critical Film Reviews 