Paul Thomas Anderson strikes me as one of those Hollywood auteurs whose early successes led to a lack of mitigation in their later work. While his films are always interesting and often quite compelling, everything he’s done since Boogie Nights has felt a little bloated to me, a little too in love with itself. And [...]
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The new feature by acclaimed French auteur Leos Carax, Holy Motors (2012) is a provocative and visually accomplished film, but your appreciation of it will depend largely on your tolerance for plotless weirdness. The film is about Oscar (Denis Lavant), who leaves his loving family one morning, climbs into an imposing stretch limo, and heads [...]
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A competent but humdrum dramedy, Celeste & Jesse Forever (2012) is about the perfect couple — who happen to be getting divorced. Celeste (Rashida Jones) is an ambitious writer and “trend forecaster” who totally has her life put together. Her soon-to-be-ex-husband Jesse is a slacker artist who hasn’t quite grown up yet. Celeste and Jesse [...]
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I put Wanderlust (2012) on for background noise while I was eating lunch the other day, and unexpectedly ended up watching it through. I must have missed that The State co-stars Ken Marino and David Wain were behind this one, or it probably would have been on my radar sooner. Bolstered by an excellent, talented [...]
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In light of the dopey previews, I was totally prepared to skip Looper (2012) until I saw that Rian Johnson, the writer-director of Brick, was behind it. I figured in that case it was worth adding to the queue, at least to compare it against the wildly mixed reviews I’d heard. In a pulp SF [...]
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I’m still trying to wrap my mind around Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), but so far I’m certain of two things: that I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and that it’s amazing. Set in an impoverished bayou community on the Louisiana coast, the story follows the personal journey of Hushpuppy (the remarkable Quvenzhané [...]
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Told in semi-documentary style, 13 Rue Madeleine (1947) appears at first to be one of those upbeat, patriotic post-war spy adventures, but ends up being a surprisingly dark picture – or, perhaps, not so surprising with James Cagney as the antihero at its center. Cagney plays Bob Sharkey, the chief of training for a new [...]
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360 (2011) is one of those arty, episodic films that interlaces numerous short stories into a globe-spanning mosaic. I like this kind of thing when it’s done well, or at least find it diverting, and that’s a pretty good nutshell description of my reaction to this one — a diverting film, although I’m not sure [...]
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I kind of wish I’d read the description more closely on this one. Evidently Bellflower (2011) was a surprise Sundance hit, but I have a hard time seeing why. A low budget indie with experimental qualities, the film looked like it might have an SF angle, but its characters’ interest in post-Apocalypse worlds turns out [...]
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