The death of a parent, the unspoken-of death of a child and the soon-to-be-avenged murder of a spouse stand uncontested in the lexicon of film deaths. All three offer clean, efficient endearment to a character but keep that tang of gossip about them. There is nothing to confuse an audience in the misguided struggle of [...]
In the opener of Lynne Shelton’s new movie Humpday, satisfied career man, Ben, and his pretty-but-not-hot wife, Anna, giggle in bed about being too tired to screw. The banging at the door later that night is bearded, fedora-sporting Andrew, the wild-card best friend from Ben’s past. Andrew is intense, demanding, charming. Is the carved duck [...]
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 [...]
Carlos Reygadas’s intractable, luminous film deals in punishing obscurity, uncommonly beautiful images and a kind of tight-lipped mysticism that jibes with the story’s German-speaking Mennonites who have cloistered themselves in Chihuahua, Mexico. The old folks bucked and snorted at the deliberate, lingering pace and the easily pretentious conversations referring to God and “the enemy” (the [...]
You shouldn’t punch your mom in the face, we can all agree, but I would argue that the recent, web-omnipresent recording of Christian Bale’s on-set tirade is no rock solid proof that the phenomenal child actor (recall: Empire of the Sun v. A.I. and be honest with yourself about which teenager really holds [...]