Despite the fact that my civilian ticket only earned me a back-row balcony seat in the Alice Tully Hall theater, my view of “Araf – Somewhere in Between” was still spectacular, thanks to the huge, crystal clear screen. The writer/director of the film, Yesim Ustaoglu, was present for this very first North American showing of […]
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It is a beautiful morning in the Big Apple — a perfect way to start my two-day stint at the New York Film Festival. Held at the gorgeous and expansive Lincoln Center, this year’s festival has already been going on for two weeks, leading up to tomorrow’s closing night film, Robert Zemeckis’ drama, “Flight.” But
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As a Southern California resident, I’ve long considered attending the annual Newport Beach Film Festival, but after watching “General Education,” which earned writer/director Tom Morris the “Breakthrough Filmmaker Award” at this year’s event, I think I can safely put that thought to bed. Any organization that would bestow such an honor upon this amateurish production,
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The first film in Pablo Larraín’s Pinochet trilogy, 2008’s “Tony Manero,” took an inventive, circuitous approach in depicting the horrific oppression that Chileans suffered under the rule of a dictator. The second film, 2010’s “Post Mortem,” surpasses its predecessor in terms of bleakness and enigmatic acting, all the while raising compelling ideas about the role
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The 64th annual Emmy Awards were held last night in Los Angeles and, as expected, the big winners in the major categories were Showtime’s newcomer drama “Homeland” and ABC’s beloved returning comedy “Modern Family.” If you didn’t catch the show–and hopefully you didn’t, as it was a complete and utter snooze, with the exception of
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Contemporary political films, especially those made in the United States, tend to overindulge in on-the-nose partisan messaging. Director Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator” and “Lions for Lambs,” for instance, housed admirable statements about the corrosion of American politics, but Redford undermined these with a zealot’s sledgehammer. This is why Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín’s more nuanced approach
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While the historical-fiction narrative of Daniel Lee’s “White Vengeance” may prove illuminating for Chinese viewers who are already familiar with the history of the Qin Dynasty, particularly the Hongmen Banquet event in 206 B.C., it’s safe to say that nearly every foreign viewer will be lost by the half-hour mark. Only the gist of the
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It was only a couple months ago that we learned that Richard Linklater, July Delpy, and Ethan Hawke were officially planning a follow-up to “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” and a couple weeks ago that we learned that the trio were scouting locations in Greece. Well, now comes news that they have not just started
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Anyone who thinks Michael Bay makes the biggest, loudest movies on Earth should watch the new Hong Kong film “The Viral Factor,” which may not have had the budget for giant Transformers, but nonetheless puts Bay to shame in terms of the amount of sustained action. The movie lacks a single ounce of subtlety or
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If you’re an adult, you probably haven’t yet heard of the Oogieloves — a Teletubbie-esque troupe of creature-things that star in a movie that opened in over 2,100 theaters yesterday. And if you hadn’t clicked onto this blog post, you probably never would have, either. The total opening day box office for “The Oogieloves in
