Alice Winocour’s “Augustine,” which chronicles the pioneering 19th Century French neurologist Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot’s work with the titular patient, a seizing 19-year-old kitchenmaid initially diagnosed of “female hysteria,” is less about medical breakthroughs than it is about pent-up sexual desire. Despite his stoic gaze, Dr. Charcot (Vincent Lindon) is consumed by Augustine’s (Soko’s) sly flirtatiousness […]
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Pixar is widely considered the industry leader in computer animated films, but the studio’s immaculate image detail and inventive character design are not what earned them that position. Instead, people love Pixar more for their narrative accomplishments, that they show us things we’ve never seen before (or ever expected to see)—a balloon-powered house flying to
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As I watched Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring,” based on the true story of a quintet of teenagers who robbed the Hollywood Hills homes of the rich and famous by employing the surprisingly unsophisticated method of opening unlocked doors, I wondered whether the film was trying to be a hyperbolic cultural critique a la Harmony
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I’m in a tight spot. I didn’t find “This is the End,” the new comedy made by Team Apatow without Judd Apatow’s involvement (Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg directed and produced), to be particularly funny. But most people I know and respect—and the general public, if the “B+” CinemaScore is any indication—think that the movie
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It would be difficult to tell a superhero origin story better than was done in the 1978 “Superman.” “Man of Steel” is a relentless attempt, one handled with an abundance of violence and characters but near complete lack of humanity. Before, Superman was the embodiment of decency, raised by two plainspoken, kind middle-Americans who imbued
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There’s a scene in Olivier Assayas’ recent movie “Something in the Air,” about the youth culture movements in France in the years following the sociopolitically tumultuous Summer of 1968, in which a group of filmmakers premiere their latest activist work on Laos. Its conventional essayist presentation prompts an audience member to challenge, “Shouldn’t revolutionary cinema
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“The Purge” is a high-concept thriller with a low budget and an even lower amount of thought put into its plot. There’s potential in the premise, which allows for all sorts of bloodletting, suspenseful situations, and a healthy dose of political commentary, if that’s your thing. And it is writer/director James DeMonaco’s thing, though his
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Filmmaking and magic ask much the same thing of their respective audiences: we know they aren’t “real,” but we willingly pretend as though they are in order to engage our sense of wonder. Certainly, cinema is capable of leveraging such engagement to achieve a far greater impact on people than a simple card trick is,
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Now here’s something you don’t see every (or any) weekend at the movie theater: a film about life under an ultra-conservative religion (Orthodox Judaism), made by an adherent of said religion (first-time writer/director Rama Burshtein). Filmmaking is so heavily dominated by the secular left that even the most seemingly objective portrayals of these socially antiquated
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Given how pervasive the term “hipster” has become in the current cultural vocabulary, it’s astounding how few popular artworks have explored this segment of the population in any serious, human capacity (Lena Dunham’s HBO show “Girls” is the only one that immediately springs to mind). As a result, the relatively new social classification has remained
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