Lightly populated, quiet, creepy woods in the South– littered with fallen trees just waiting for someone to impale themselves on them– naturally read as lairs for ravening hillbillies just waiting to crush, burn, melt, torture, suffocate, slice, dice, eat, or otherwise violently send unsuspecting young people (and other incidental victims) to an early passing. In … Continue reading →
Weekend can easily be described as unabashedly, unashamedly, graphically sexual when it wants to be– or needs to be. For many, this may be a point of contention. Those who are uncomfortable with or disdainful of homosexuality, for example, will quite likely turn away from the film before it even starts; the loss, frankly, is their … Continue reading →
Still not ready to close the books on 2011? Head on over to GoSeeTalk and check out the year-end pieces produced by the writing staff over there– Marc, Bill, Grady, and of course me! My contribution varies little from what I published here at ACVF, but you might be pleasantly surprised at some of the others’ … Continue reading →
It’s difficult to say whether Juliette Binoche or Abbas Kiarostami is the star of the latter’s newest film, Certified Copy. Much comes to rest on Binoche’s delicate shoulders– the nameless character she plays is the only principal character in the film apart from co-star William Shimell– but Kiarostami’s direction, assured yet humble, constitutes bravura filmmaking … Continue reading →
We’re almost there– it’s down to the final ten. Starting with: 10) 13 Assassins: “While the plot that subsequently comes together falls within the bailiwick typical to most men-on-a-mission films as Shinzaemon collects his chosen warriors– a motley crew of samurai ranging in age and experience, which eventually also comes to include a hunter (Yusuke … Continue reading →
2010, as a cinematic year, left me somewhat cold. I distinctly remember having a difficult time choosing my annual top ten, for two reasons. One, this time last year I’d only seen about thirty-ish movies; that’s not a very wide range of movies to choose from, though I was certainly able to muster ten films … Continue reading →
More than fear, the great takeaway of The Ward is disbelief. How could the man responsible for 1982’s masterwork The Thing have it in him to churn out something so horrid as this? It’s hard to see anything of the John Carpenter of twenty-nine years ago in his latest offering, the first cinematic effort he’s made in a … Continue reading →
Flamethrowers, precarious romance, badass muscle cars, and directionless, angry young men make for a potentially cataclysmic cocktail. So goes the narrative of Evan Glodell’s Bellflower, a tale of love and apocalypse and slackerdom and possibly the most aesthetically unique film of the year. Glodell, who not only directed the film but also wrote the script … Continue reading →
(Cross-posted over at GoSeeTalk.) In an early scene in Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo, Scarlet Johansson’s beleaguered zookeeper whirls around on Matt Damon’s optimistic single father turned zoo owner and demonstrates the film’s greatest hindrance in one ham-handed chunk of dialogue. Neither Crowe nor the film has any faith in its audience to pick up … Continue reading →
(Alternate title: In which A Constant Visual Feast becomes a social pariah within the film blogosphere.) The primary emotion that characterizes my reaction to Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids, the sleeper hit comedy of the year, is disappointment. Crushing, heavy, appalling disappointment. Coupled with that, denial; I don’t want to acknowledge my disappointment. I don’t want to … Continue reading →
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