Now that Harry Potter is getting older, his author is finally free to explore more deeply the mature themes and political overtones the wizards’ war acts out. But Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is packing more than just politics: it’s hilarious, deeply sad, visually arresting, scary as hell, and sexy, too.
In their sixth [...]
To hear the digital-age aesthetes tell it, you’d think the ugly “look” of Public Enemies, Michael Mann’s latest, was a flat-out accident. They imagine Mann and Dante Spinotti (his cinematographer for decades) slumping down in their chairs at a screening in Los Angeles, covering their faces with their coats, exchanging panicky whispers: “Why is [...]
Even with a flashy title like Hurt Locker you won’t find a shoot ‘em up blockbuster here. Never mind the fact that a woman directed an action film; Hurt Locker stands apart from other war movies because it takes a different form than most. The rest have gripping, outrageous plots, whereas Hurt [...]
Birth, starring Nicole Kidman, was released to little fanfare in the spring of 2004. The movie received quietly mixed reviews, and a brief moment in the media spotlight for a controversial adult/child relationship between Kidman and a ten-year-old boy who claimed to be her reincarnated husband, specifically for a scene where the two share [...]
Although expertly executed, Jim Jarmusch’s latest release, The Limits of Control, tests the limits of its audience’s attention span. (BananaWho has an attention span much longer than the average viewer, but shorter than your average hardcore art film snob.) This film is even more plotless than the bulk of Jarmusch’s work, but unlike [...]