By Amy R Handler. The war between pharmaceutical companies and the personal injury lawyers fighting them can be seen on virtually every American and New Zealand television channel, no matter what time the day or night. No wonder so many people are depressed. How could they not be when they […]
CinemAfrica 3: The Last Laugh in N’Djamena
By Daniel Lindvall. A Screaming Man, written and directed by Chadian Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, was selected as best feature film at CinemaAfrica, Stockholm’s annual African film festival, in 2011, after having won the Jury Prize in Cannes the previous year. Adam is pool attendant at a luxury hotel in N’Djamena, capital […]
Tyrannosaur (2011)
By Jacob Mertens. The title of Paddy Considine’s film Tyrannosaur can’t help but call to mind a vicious rampage of death and destruction. As the audience witnesses the opening moments, they immediately associate the prehistoric creature’s savagery with Peter Mullan’s Joseph, who rages outside of a bar and inadvertently kicks […]
Melancholia (2011)
By Bryan Nixon. The notorious Dogme 95 elitist Lars von Trier hanged Bjork (Dancer in the Dark, 2000), forced Jorgen Leth to remake his 1967 short The Perfect Human in the red light district of Bombay (The Five Obstructions, 2003), and showcased the genital mutilation of Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg […]
‘Where there are Mines Lives the Devil’ – Altiplano
By Amy R Handler. Award winning filmmakers Peter Brosens and Jessica Hope Woodworth have woven magic like none other in their most recent feature, Altiplano(2009). But viewers beware… This highly potent masterpiece is not for children, or the faint of heart. Perhaps the sorcery lies in Altiplano’s form, which simultaneously […]
Bride Flight: A Psychological Joyride
By Amy R Handler. Bride Flight (2008) is a haunting masterpiece that combines the strength of Dr. Zhivago with the ambiguity of The End of the Affair. The result is a psychological joyride of epic proportions. Based upon the bestselling, novel of the same name, Bride Flight focuses upon three […]
The Ides of March (2011)
By Bryan Nixon. The Ides of March functions as a raging soap opera that concerns itself with affairs within the campaign trail for the presidency of the United States of America. The presidential candidate in question is Mike Morris (George Clooney), a moral and suave democrat whose religion is the […]
One Trick Pony: The Spurlock Brand
By Daniel Lindvall. The only truthful ads are those that tell you they’re lying, claims Ralph Nader in Morgan Spurlock’s documentary, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011). As per usual with Spurlock his new film is based on one simple and calculatedly controversial idea: to make a film about branding, […]
On the Endless Road to Nowhere
By Amy R Handler. It’s difficult to know where reality ends and fiction begins in Monte Hellman’s most recent movie, Road to Nowhere(2010). And even when we’re informed that what we’ve just seen is true, we feel less at ease then ever – and wonder what games Hellman, and scriptwriter […]
A Somewhat Gentle Man
By Amy R Handler. Comedy is one of those strange and elusive phenomena that troubles even the most sensitive critical connoisseurs. It is all the more difficult to capture and sustain in a feature length film, and many have tried and failed. Luckily for us, Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland […]