At his recent Republican National Convention speech, actor Clint Eastwood first addressed the crowd by saying, “I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, what’s a movie tradesman doing out here? You know they are all left-wingers out there, left of Lenin. At least that is what people think. That is not really the case. There are […]
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Despite sharing a similarly whimsical spirit with their first feature, “Persepolis,” “Chicken with Plums” is not the follow-up that one would expect from filmmakers Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi, though perhaps it signals that they will build their entire career around unexpected marriages of subject and aesthetic. “Persepolis” used simple, hand-drawn, black-and-white animation to bring
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It is a testament to the gimmick-free execution of “Robot & Frank” that one of the first adjectives that come to mind when discussing the film is not “quirky.” After all, the premise–in the near future, a former cat burglar (Frank Langella) battling dementia uses his helper robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) to steal jewelry
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“The Words” is a story within a story within a story, and only one of these offers anything that resembles a conclusion. Given writer/directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal’s apparent love of plot–what other Hollywood filmmakers have recently implemented a three-layered structure?–the movie’s abrupt, mildly confusing ending seems auspicious at first. But upon reflection, it
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David Koepp’s “Premium Rush” is as meat-and-potatoes as action pictures get, though such a masculine descriptor seems ill-fitted for a movie about a guy who uses a bicycle, not a muscle car, as his main method of transportation. That said, Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is manlier than your average tights-donning, butt-waving weekend cyclist; he sports plain
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As wildly fantastical versions of the world featuring kung-fu pandas, dueling monsters and aliens, and talking insects have become the primary domain of the children’s film, the more grounded magic realist fable has all but faded into oblivion. Only the legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki still regularly indulges the style, and even his work has
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“Lawless,” an ultra-violent gangster tale by John Hillcoat (“The Proposition,” “The Road”), is a textbook example of why the final act of a film is its most important. Movies that start off poorly have the potential to rebound, gaining the audience’s trust and respect with future developments. The ones with weak midsections can often be
Few American presidents have inspired as much dissonance in public perception as Barack Obama. Political junkies and ordinary citizens alike are highly accustomed to the wide range of terms used to characterize the current Commander-in-Chief — from visionary to bumbling buffoon, post-racial uniter to race-baiter, bold terror warrior to scheming capitulator, socialist to corporate stooge,
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Since its inception in the early 1990s with Robert Rodriguez’ “El Mariachi,” the do-it-yourself filmmaking movement has been roundly celebrated by the entertainment media. Indeed, micro-budget films that have blossomed into full-fledged Hollywood hits, from “The Blair Witch Project” to “Napoleon Dynamite,” offer compelling narratives of the little guy seizing upon the promise of capitalism,
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“Expect the expected” could be the tagline to “The Expendables 2,” the loudest, shootin’-ist film of the summer. This sequel to Sylvester Stallone’s 2010 fanboy action epic finds a nearly identical cast doing nearly identical things. And while that may sound like a damning critique, it isn’t. Also in the vein of its predecessor, “The
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