By Gary M. Kramer. Bertrand Blier’s Going Places—recently re-issued on DVD and Blu-Ray—is perhaps as brazen as it must have been upon release in 1974. The film, based on the writer/director’s novel—whose title translates as “The Testicles”—traces the movement of two horny and ballsy friends, Jean-Claude (Gérard Depardieu) and Pierrot […]
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)
By Bryan Nixon. I have not read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and I have not seen the original 2009 Swedish film by director Niels Arden Oplev, and as such I am unable to draw comparisons to David Fincher’s latest film and his source material. What […]
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)
By Jacob Mertens. Imagine the dim squalor of a CGI 19th century London. A conspicuous automobile squeezes past a narrow alley, coughing smoke, shambling down the cobbled street amongst pedestrians and horse drawn carriages. Inside the car, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) dons the vaudevillian disguise of a wispy, full-length beard, […]
American Translation (2011)
December 12, 2011
By Gary M. Kramer. Another penetrating examination of sex and crime, love and death, Pascal Arnold and Jean-Marc Barr’s compelling American Translation picks up thematically where their previous effort, One to Another ended. This striking new film confirms the directors’ insistence on making daring, challenging films about sexual, mental, emotional, […]
Tom McCarthy’s Win Win: All in the Game
By Matthew Sorrento. While wary of classification in general, filmmakers and cinephiles resist associations to the “sports movie” the most. The athlete’s journey to the final match, the win- or lose-all moment, is often simplified into mass culture. The Coen brothers reflected this distrust in Barton Fink, when the title […]
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
By Carolyn Lake. The much anticipated adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s award-winning novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, has become one of this year’s must-see films. Director and co-writer Lynne Ramsay has created a sensory feast that leaves you feeling ill, as it should. Tilda Swinton does a truly exceptional […]
Preaching Brimstone in Camp Hell
By Cleaver Patterson. Camp Hell (2010) is not as the title may suggest an expose of the outer fringes of gay culture. What we have instead is something often anomalistic within the genre in which it comes – a horror film which attempts to be serious. Whether it succeeds or […]
Red Dog (2011)
By Carolyn Lake. Kriv Stenders’ Australian box-office hit of the year, Red Dog recently cleaned up at the Inside Film Awards – Australia’s “people’s choice” awards – winning in seven of the nine categories it was nominated in, including Best Director, Best Actor (Josh Lucas), Best Cinematography (Geoffrey Hall), and […]
A Dangerous Method (2011)
By Bryan Nixon. Director David Cronenberg is an auteur of flesh cinema whose films consistently examine the psychology of sex, violence, and regeneration. Having made films such as the voyeuristic Videodrome (1983), the mutating mad scientist thriller The Fly (1986), the gynecologic Dead Ringers (1988), the drug and bug infested […]
Kumaré (2011)
By Jacob Mertens. I have always believed in an idea of spirituality. For me, spirituality encompasses an intimate relationship between an individual and his or her surrounding environment. Note that I do not mean the word “environment” in the traditional sense of landscape and atmosphere, but rather as an external […]