Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Art house fare’ Category

‘THE GUARD”: Irish redneck savant

Posted in Art house fare, Popcorn movies, tagged , , , , , on September 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Brendan Gleeson

“THE GUARD” My rating: B+ (Opens wide on Sept. 2)

96 minutes | Audience rating: R 

Brendan Gleeson has always been a great actor, but he’s spent most of his life in supporting roles.

“The Guard” won’t change that, but it should.

This absolutely wonderful film from first-time feature director John Michael McDonagh (who also penned the script) finds Gleeson dominating every second he’s on screen in a role tailor-made for his imposing physical presence and bullish personality.

The movie is a crime saga, a buddy flick, a black comedy…but most of all it’s a terrific character study of a guy we’re not sure we like, but who grabs our attention and won’t let go.

Gleeson here plays Sgt. Gerry Boyle, a member of the Guardia (Ireland’s national police force) stationed on the west coast near Galway.

Boyle is fat, cynical and sarcastic…at first glance he might be the Hibernian equivalent of a redneck Southern sheriff. (more…)

Read Full Post »

“THE FUTURE”: It isn’t what it used to be

Posted in Art house fare, tagged on September 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

“THE FUTURE” My rating: B (Opening Sept. 2 at the Tivoli)

91 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“The Future” is the second film of the summer to leave me stranded between admiration and nagging irritation.

The first was “Tree of Life” from the semi-reclusive Terrence Malick.

“The Future” springs from the non-reclusive-but-definitely-out-there mind of performance artist/writer/filmmaker/video artist Miranda July.

Like her debut film, “You and Me and Everyone We Know,” this is an extremely quirky affair that will charm some viewers and alienate others.

It’s about a midlife crisis, but not the typical Hollywood-movie midlife crisis where a guy in his 40s goes looking for thrills before returning to his wife with his tail between his legs.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE”: Taking a bullet for the House of Hussein

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , , , on August 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Dominic Cooper as Uday Hussein...

“THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE” My rating: B (Opening wide on Sept. 26)

109 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The right role can turn a journeyman actor into an overnight star.

Take, for instance, Dominic Cooper’s performance in “The Devil’s Double.”

Up to now the British Cooper has been recognized mostly for playing the groom in the movie version of “Mamma Mia!” But here he tackles not one role but two, and in the process pretty much burns up the screen.

Based on real incidents, “Devil…” is the story of Latif Yahia, an officer in the Iraqi army who in the 1980s was tapped to serve as the official double of Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s notoriously spoiled and violent oldest son.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“THE WHISTLEBLOWER”: Bucking the system

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , , , , , on August 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Rachel Weisz

“THE WHISTLEBLOWER” My rating: B (Opening Aug. 26 at the Rio)

112 minutes | MPAA rating: R

For a first feature, Larysa Kondracki’s “The Whistleblower” is a more than competent thriller carrying a considerable emotional punch.

Based on the real experiences of Kathryn Bolkovac, a Nebraska cop who in the late ‘90s signed up for a United Nations peacekeeping force in the former Yugoslavia, this suspenser carries a big dose of moral outrage.

Kathryn (Rachel Weisz) is a member of the Lincoln PD who already has lost primary custody of her kids and now faces losing them entirely, since her ex is relocating to another state.

Strapped with debt and unable to find a law enforcement job near the children, she answers an ad for a high-paying job as a U.N. Peacekeeper. Her idea is to return after a year with enough money to start over.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“TERI”: Big heart. Big weirdness.

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , on August 25, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Jacob Wysocki, John C.Reilly

“TERRI” My rating: C+ (Opening Aug. 26 at the Tivoli)

105 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Taking a cue from its Baby Huey-ish title character, “Terri” has a big heart.

But you’ve got to wade through a lot of weirdness to get a glimpse of it.

The nominal hero of director Azazel Jacobs’ film is an obese bundle of lethargy. Not that Terri (Jacob Wysocki) has a whole lot to get excited about.

Abandoned by his parents, the teen lives in a sort of bric-a-brac-littered fairy tale cottage in the middle of the woods with his Uncle James (Creed Bratton), who is battling dementia.

One day Uncle James seems alert and erudite; the next he’s a drowsy zombie.

It’s hard to tell who’s taking care of whom.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“ONE DAY”: When Dexter met Emma

Posted in Art house fare, Popcorn movies, tagged , , , on August 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

“ONE DAY” My rating: B+ (Opening wide on Aug. 19)

108 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

My cynical side is scolding me for enjoying “One Day” so much.

Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess in "One Day"

My poetic/amorous side is telling my cynical side to take a flying leap.

This is a chick flick with a Ph.D. — funny, sad, insightful and swooningly romantic, perfectly acted by Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess and evoking universal emotions about love and friendship.

Moreover, it was directed by Lone Sherfig, creator of one of my favorite films of recent years — “Italian for Beginners” — as well as the Oscar-nominated “An Education.”

Yeah, it’s predicated on a gimmick. Every episode in this Brit saga — there are 20 of them — takes place on July 15 in successive years. (David Nicholls adapted his own novel for the screen.)

We meet Emma (Hathaway) and Dexter (Sturgess) on July 15, 1988 as they celebrate their college graduation by partying all night with mutual friends. As dawn breaks they end up in her apartment…but all they do is talk (at least I think that’s all they do).

They’re an odd couple. Dex is a mediocre student but a wildly successful social animal. He’s a garrulous charmer, shallow but irresistible.

Emma is the dorky brain. Clearly she’s never enjoyed Dexter’s party life. Her look — shapeless dresses, Doc Marten boots and huge glasses — and her self-deprecating humor suggest a graceless young woman with little confidence in the romance department.

And yet over the next two decades their lives will be entwined in ways both swooning and heartbreaking.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“SARAH’S KEY”: Little girl lost

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , , on August 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Kristen Scott Thomas

“SARAH’S KEY” My rating: B (Opening wide on Aug. 19)

111 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“Sarah’s Key” is actually two movies, one set in World War II and the other in the present.

The first is a devastating look at the horrors of the Holocaust as witnessed by a child.

The latter is a not-terribly-compelling detective story.

In the end they dovetail to make a more-or-less complete whole.

Julia Jarmond (Kristin Scott Thomas), an American-born writer for a Paris magazine, is researching a story on one of the darkest blots on French history — the July 1942 roundup of 13,000 Jews, not by the occupying Germans but by the French police.

The prisoners were herded into a covered sports stadium without food, water or sanitation facilities. Those who survived several days in this hellhole (one character compares it to the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina, only 10 times worse) were then shipped off to labor or death camps.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“IF A TREE FALLS”: Friends of the Earth, enemies of the people

Posted in Art house fare, Documentaries, tagged , on August 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

“IF A TREE FALLS”  My rating: B+ (Opens Aug. 19 at the Screenland Crossroads)

85 minutes | No MPAA rating

Watching “If a Tree Falls,” Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman’s excellent documentary about the lumberyard-burning, development-hating Earth Liberation Front, I was reminded of the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages”:

“Good and bad, I define these terms, quite clear, no doubt, somehow…”

This film isn’t just a terrifically informative and insightful history of a radical movement that over several years committed acts of domestic terrorism (at least that’s what the government argued) to limit what its members regarded as the systematic rape of the Earth.

It’s also a meditation on youth, idealism, the political process and the very essence of human nature, especially our impulses for self preservation.

Above all else, this film asks unanswerable questions about right and wrong, good and bad, and leaves its audience both incensed and sad.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“TABLOID”: Torn from the headlines

Posted in Art house fare, Documentaries, tagged , , on August 19, 2011| 1 Comment »

Tabloid girl Joyce McKinney back in the scandalous '70s...

“TABLOID”  My rating: B (Opening Aug. 19 at the Tivoli and Glenwood at Red Bridge)

87 minutes | No MPAA rating

“Tabloid” finds heavy duty documentarist Errol Morris happily slumming. And boy, is he having fun.

The maker of such noteworthy non-fiction films as “Gates of Heaven” (pet cemeteries), “Mr. Death” (a Holocaust denier), “The Thin Blue Line” (prosecutorial malfeasance in Texas) and the Oscar-winning “The Fog of War” (Robert McNamara), Morris tends to gravitate toward weighty subject matter.

But with “Tabloid” he delves into a torn-from-the-headlines scandal to reveal the face of a true American eccentric.

Morris’ subject is Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen from North Carolina who in 1977 set off a media feeding frenzy when she and several confederates traveled to England and kidnapped her former boyfriend, a young Morman doing missionary work.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“BUSKING THE SYSTEM”: Playing for life

Posted in Art house fare, Documentaries, tagged , , , on August 19, 2011| 1 Comment »

Kansas Citian Phillip Bradley is one of the subjects of "Busking the System," a documentary about musicians playing in NYC's subways

“BUSKING THE SYSTEM” My rating: C+  (Opening Aug. 19 at the Screenland Crown Center)

80 minutes | No MPAA rating

An art form? An irritation? Begging with a fancy label? Or perhaps just a legitimate expression of personal thoughts and impulses?

However you view it, busking — performing in public places for contributions from the crowd — is a fact of life in NYC, especially down on the subway platforms.

Justin Morales’ documentary “Busking the System” follows several aspiring buskers (two with Kansas City connections) to the Big Apple where they try their hands at playing their music for crowds of commuters and tourists.

It’s not an easy gig, despite efforts in recent years by the subway authority to legitimize busking by holding auditions with the winning acts getting the most visible locations and time slots.

Among the subjects of this likable but unremarkable documentary are Phillip Bradley, a Kansas City singer/songwriter/guitarist, and Nathan Corsi, a native of Akron, Ohio, whose family has since relocated to KC.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »