A gripping moral and social drama set in present-day Iran, Asghar Farhadi’s follow-up to the fine About Elly lifts the director to the front rank of contemporary world directors, and should be compulsive viewing for anyone wondering what has happened to Iranian cinema. It is compelling viewing for just about everybody, for that matter. Showing a control of investigative pacing that recalls classic Hitchcock and a feel for ethical nuance that is all his own, Farhadi has hit upon a story that is not only about men and women, children and parents, justice and religion in today’s Iran, but Read the full article…
Pedro Almodóvar’s first horror film is the work of a master near the top of his game. In his new film The Skin I Live In, Pedro Almodóvar reaches out tentatively into unexplored genre territory — horror. It’s a creepy story: Antonio Banderas stars as a plastic surgeon devoted to creating a new kind of skin resistant to pain — and finds a human guinea pig on whom to perfect the process. Yet despite squirm-worthy moments when scalpels are poised above bare torsos, the promise of horror gives way to Almodóvar’s broader, familiar preoccupations: identity, blood ties, disguises Read the full article…
I viewed “Hanna” with a mild curiosity. It feels that it started out as an average revenge thriller that was later enhanced by above average talents. The cast and crew of this film did more for the story that it could have asked of them. Sure, a lot of shooting and chasing goes around, but you can sense an evidence of planning and patience within them. The creators of “Hanna” operated with a vision of an audience with an attention span slightly longer than that of others. The film opens somewhere near the Arctic Circle. A teenage girl, named Read the full article…
There are two kinds of spy movies. One features James Bond or a knockoff thereof and involves a lot of guilt-free sex, guilt-free killing, and guilt-free wrecking of other people’s countries. The other features grim people having no fun at all while doing a very dirty job indeed, and with a title like The Debt it’s clear that the only things being shaken in this particular spy movie will be the leads’ personal morality and their commitment to the ugly work they do. Still, things start out on a fairly upbeat note, as three Mossad agents – Rachel (Jessica Read the full article…
“Musical terrorism.” When I heard this phrase in conjunction with ‘Sound of Noise,’ a Swedish film that screened at Fantastic Fest on Saturday, I immediately thought of ‘The Blues Brothers.’ Those gentlemen wreaked a lot of havoc … but of course it was for a charitable cause. In ‘Sound of Noise,’ musicians wreak major havoc all over the city, on purpose, simply because they love music and want people to hear the music in everyday life, as opposed to Muzak and even traditional classical music. The film’s successful balance of comedy, music, and police procedural make it easy to understand Read the full article…
Taiwanese action saga tells the true story of Taiwan’s aboriginal people who were almost wiped out by Japanese colonizers in the 1930s. Stunning to look at, authentic to a fault and a little tedious to follow for over two and a half hours, the Taiwanese action saga Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale tells the true story of Taiwan’s aboriginal people who were almost wiped out by Japanese colonizers in the 1930s. Their rebellion under the leadership of Chief Mouna Rudo is recounted in a spectacular, almost non-stop sequence of grisly hand-to-hand combat scenes. No martial arts here, but Read the full article…
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is a compelling thriller to begin with, but it adds the rare quality of having a heroine more fascinating than the story. She’s a 24-year-old goth girl named Lisbeth Salander, with body piercings and tattoos: thin, small, fierce, damaged, a genius computer hacker. She smokes to quiet her racing heart. Lisbeth is as compelling as any movie character in recent memory. Played by Noomi Rapace with an unwavering intensity, she finds her own emotional needs nurtured by the nature of the case she investigates, the disappearance of a young girl 40 years earlier. Read the full article…
Amid all the luxuries on display in the Italian film “I Am Love” — the chandeliers, tapestries and paneled walls, the paintings, statuary and white-gloved servants — nothing holds your gaze as forcefully as Tilda Swinton’s alabaster face. The first time you see that vision, her character, Emma Recchi, a Russian who’s married into a wealthy Milanese family, is stage-managing the lavish birthday party that opens the film. By the end of this often soaringly beautiful melodrama, which closes with a funeral, Emma’s face will have crumpled into a ruin. But it will also be fully alive, having been granted, Read the full article…
Machiavellian mind games, a twisted vendetta and high-octane gun slinging among a bandit posing as a governor, his strategist and a small-town kingpin are the stuff of adventure and trenchant humor in the Chinese western, “Let the Bullets Fly.” As an allegory on power, corruption and rough justice, it has flashes of intelligence and political acumen. Actor-auteurJiang Wen directs with a macho, devil-may-care bravadothat expresses the anarchy and rapacious opportunism of warlord-dominated China in the 1920s. Although the film promotional hook is the rare cast combination of Chow Yun Fat, Ge You and Jiang himself, its instant rise Read the full article…
