“You don’t wanna be in love. You wanna be in love in a movie.” Nora Ephron wrote that line. And put it in a movie. The fact that Rosie O’Donnell—as confidante and close friend Becky in 1993’s Sleepless in Seattle, released this month on Netflix—can bark that line at a misty-eyed Meg Ryan without setting off alarm bells of scriptwriting self-consciousness is, perhaps, impressive. In the world of Sleepless there’s a lot of talk (period) and a lot of talk of romance in particular: degrees, gradations, how do you know, and how do you know you know. This chattiness is largely due to the film’s central plot conceit: it’s a love story where boy doesn’t meet girl until the final frames. Time that would be filled by first dates and lovers’ quarrels is, in Sleepless, mainly devoted to wondering. Continue reading Sleepless in Seattle: Boy Meets Skeptic →

It’s a bit ironic that Divergent tries to emphasize the importance of nonconformity while doing so little to set itself apart from the flood of dystopian films hitting theaters recently. Continue reading Distracted from Distraction by Divergent →

Partway through John Michael McDonagh’s film Calvary, Father James (Brendan Gleeson), a county priest in a small town in Ireland, encounters a young girl on the road. Continue reading Calvary: A Good Priest is Hard to Find →

Gone Girl, much like its characters, puts on a false front. It has all the trappings of a sleek psychological thriller and the heart of a confused dark comedy. If you believe deeply in the hellishness of marriage, or suburbia, it might hit close to home. But for the lucky few who don’t, this movie offers little more than a twisted, and sometimes fun, ride into absurdity. Continue reading Gone Girl: Less Than Meets the Eye →

One month ago, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes came out to impressive critical acclaim—and has made a lot of money. Few were more excited than I, and in anticipation I took a look back at some of the franchise’s earlier works. I won’t review Pierre Boulle’s original 1963 novel (frankly, the films are much more interesting), I haven’t read the comic book adaptations, and I’ve yet to view the 70s TV shows. But I’ve now seen all eight films and I want to share that with you. 

Continue reading Before the Dawn: A Look Back at One of Sci-Fi’s Great Franchises →

It would be dishonest for me to review Blackfish, a recent documentary about an orca at Sea World, without first disclosing my history with the park.

Continue reading Blackfish: Fear and Loving in Orlando →

In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder outlines a myth concerning the origin of painting. A young woman, to preserve the memory of her departing lover, traces the outline of his shadow against a wall. While they are separated, the image will stand in his place; or more precisely, it will be forever linked to the woman’s memory of their relationship. That is to say, despite the illusion of permanence the image is fluid, inconstant, elusive.

Elena is the result of director Petra Costa’s exploration of memory through image, of the pains and joys of remembering something deeply intimate and yet just out of reach: the mind of a loved one. Part elegy, part essay, part documentary, and part missive, the premise is beautiful and the film has real moments of grace. Elena is difficult to categorize; but we don’t have to.

Continue reading Elena: Grieving Memory →

Frozen melts away the malaise that plagued Disney animation for over a decade. The film launches itself into the highest ranks of animated classics not by repeating the classic Disney formula for success, but by breaking free and charting its own course. Honest treatment of mature themes sparks the magic of Frozen, allowing the story to engender characters with whom the audience can empathize.

Continue reading Always Fresh, Never Frozen: An Instant Disney Classic →

This review comes on the heels of Schindler’s List’s 20^th anniversary, but the impact of the film hasn’t diminished one bit in the interim. On the contrary, Spielberg’s most highly regarded film is more essential now than it’s ever been, as cinema becomes more technologically savvy, more commercialized, more data-driven, and film narrative becomes increasingly meta-referential, schizophrenically fast-paced, and reluctant to simply present art at face value.

Continue reading Anniversary: Schindler’s List, A Human Triumph →

August: Osage County succeeds remarkably well in transporting us to the strange Okie world in which it takes place.  The movie is filled with vistas of the sun-scorched Plains, a setting Barbara Weston (Julia Roberts) contemptuously refers to as “flat, hot, nothing.”  And throughout the viewing, that’s exactly where we find ourselves.  A place that lacks depth and dimension, is fraught with cacophony and argumentation, and ultimately amounts to less than the sum of its parts.  Not that the film isn’t pleasant at times—don’t get me wrong—but as we scratch our heads for answers to questions like what was this movie about, anyway? we can’t seem to place August: Osage County anywhere at all.

Continue reading August: Osage County “Flat, Hot Nothing” →

When Christian Mungiu won the Palme d’Or for 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days in 2007, it was the first time a Romanian filmmaker had received such accolades from the International film community. Since then, the films of Mungiu and other young Romanian filmmakers have emerged as the Romanian New Wave, a collection of films that are generally set during the last years of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s reign and characterized by austerity, realism, and the kind of dark, biting comedic wit that only thoroughly oppressed people know how to wield with dexterity.

Continue reading Tales From the Golden Age: An Introduction to Romanian Culture →