Hipster loathing has graduated from passive distaste to aggressive protest. The religion of rebellion, of conformity to anti-conformity, seems to every generation looking back on their bygone years in the fold to be at a fever pitch. As naive and as stylistically and ideologically clichéd as each iteration of youth culture is, it was never [...]
”Peepli Live” has been the toast and tea of town for the better part of this past year. A Sundance selection and Berlinale screening, it has been picking up favor and five star reviews across the Prime Meridian, becoming the focus of India’s annual interest in evaluating its culture through the Western eye. Unlike the [...]
Paperwork? You must be kidding. No badass buddy cop duo has ever been troubled by the monotony of filling out countless forms for every firearm discharged, domestic dispute, auto accident, petty shoplifting, or false burglar alarm. You never saw the likes of Riggs and Murtaugh, Tango and Cash, Hammond and Cates or even Turner and [...]
Safety first. “Dinner for Schmucks” clings to that mantra like a corporate lawyer with executive overlords deathly afraid of dishing out workers comp checks to injured employees. The production studio, Spyglass Entertainment, must have circulated a memo during pre-production forbidding experimentation of any kind, taking chances, sharpening the writing, casting out of type or any [...]
With age, Angelina Jolie has acquired a certain attributable nuance and sophistication that until recently would have been thought impossible from such an archetypal anti-feminist signature of adolescent male fantasy. Excepting her performance in 1999′s “Girl, Interrupted” this mysterious icon of sexuality has made a career of adding the superficial sexual sparks to action films targeted [...]
Two attractive twentysomethings meet for the first time in a Manhattan restaurant and engage in obligatory small talk. What was intended to be a meeting between indie film director and potential star soon promises to be the beginning of a long and complex relationship that won’t end how either had planned. So begins director Brian Ackley’s micro-budget [...]
Brilliant, vivid colors flood the opening moments of Ya’Ke Smith’s latest short film, “Katrina’s Son.” A bright yellow sun bathes a young boy in a beautiful warmth — a superficial warmth obscured by the coldness of death, abandonment. Ed, a young New Orleans resident quietly mourns the death of his grandmother and only guardian in [...]
Rumor has it that three follow up films, a sequel and two crossovers with the “Alien” franchise, to John McTiernan’s 1987 sci-fi thriller, “Predator,” exist somewhere out there in the ether. I’m convinced this is nothing more than a legend, an old wives’ tale. I don’t believe it. There is only one sequel to that [...]
Two parts “Captain Planet,” one part “Star Wars.” Mix together in a large bowl of rock-paper-scissors. Replace ethnic characters with white Americans. Cast “The Daily Show” comedian as evil fire lord. Bake for 103 minutes. If you’re interested in seeing M. Night Shyamalan’s cartoonish adaptation of Nickelodeon’s hugely popular animated television series, save yourself ten bucks and [...]
It takes about three months to make a movie — a Hollywood movie — excluding post and preproduction. Some take longer. Nightmarish production on Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” took 238 days. Stanley Kubrick’s penultimate masterpiece, “Eyes Wide Shut,” took more than 15 months. Nonsense. Jim Wynorski, the most prolific filmmaker you’ve never heard of, [...]
