Tag: Zal Batmanglij
50 articles
Drinking Buddies (2013)
Sexual tension abounds between friends played by Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson in “Drinking Buddies.” Photo: Magnolia Pictures If “When Harry Met Sally” (1989) is Nora Ephron’s take on Woody Allen,...
Aug 2, 2013 / Eric M. ArmstrongLe Havre (2011)
Aki Kaurismäki is one of those directors whose work is impossible to confuse with anyone else’s. Certainly, his style could be compared to Béla Tarr’s in the somberly staged performance of the...
May 21, 2012 / Alison FrankThings I Don’t Understand (2011)
Hugo Dillon and Molly Ryman in "Things I Don't Understand" Someday, everyone you know won’t exist. Tomorrow doesn’t matter until it’s today. No one makes it through life unscathed, in one way or...
May 2, 2012 / Eric M. ArmstrongA soothing demise: Lars von Trier’s ‘Melancholia’ considered
Kirsten Dunst greets the apocalypse “Melancholia” is Lars von Trier’s intelligent, melodramatic, achingly beautiful and wickedly funny new film. It tells the story of Justine (a transcendent Kirsten...
Jan 18, 2012 / Vanessa Graniello50/50 (2011)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen star in "50/50" Making a comedy about cancer is risky business. Making a comedy about a young, attractive person with cancer is self-sabotage. People don’t go to...
Oct 23, 2011 / Eric M. ArmstrongDrive (2011)
“Drive” romanticizes a lot of things that shouldn’t be romanticized: The myth of redemptive violence, dangerous and illegal driving, robbery, evading police and, most egregiously, Members Only...
Oct 18, 2011 / Eric M. ArmstrongAttack the Block (2011)
John Boyega leads a street gang of alien-killers in "Attack the Block" It’s Guy Fawkes Night , and the South London sky is pulsing with brilliant explosions. In the midst of the celebration, Sam...
Sep 14, 2011 / Eric M. ArmstrongThe Tree of Life (2011)
In 1931 Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel proved what is now known as the Incompleteness Theorem. He demonstrated that within any given system, a robot for example, there would always be at least one...
Jun 27, 2011 / Eric M. ArmstrongPriest (2010)
Paul Bettany as the ass-kicking, vampire-slaying "Priest" Critics can be a fickle bunch. Lavishing this, lambasting that. But with most films it’s relatively easy to predict the critical response....
May 15, 2011 / Eric M. ArmstrongHanna (2011)
Saoirse Ronan with a blood-spattered face in "Hanna" Up-and-coming auteur Rian Johnson recently tweeted, “The filmmaking in Hanna was pretty humbling.” That’s high praise coming from the man behind...
Apr 28, 2011 / Eric M. ArmstrongSource Code (2011)
What would it be like if Alfred Hitchcock directed an episode of “Quantum Leap” with a script based on “Groundhog Day”? Well, it wouldn’t turn out exactly like “Source Code,” but it’d be pretty...
Apr 10, 2011 / Eric M. ArmstrongPaul (2011)
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the cheeky Brits who brought us “Hot Fuzz” and “Shaun of the Dead,” put their heads together once again to give us their signature fanboy take on the alien encounter movie....
Mar 19, 2011 / Eric M. ArmstrongThe Adjustment Bureau (2011)
Do humans really have free will? It certainly seems like we do. But, given the right conditions, science can accurately predict the behavior of atoms. And aren’t our bodies just a giant cluster of...
Mar 16, 2011 / Eric M. ArmstrongEnter the Void (2010)
“Enter the Void” will be loathed by a lot of people. Dismissed as a pretentious stoner flick trying desperately to dazzle. And I won’t completely disagree. But French director Gaspar Noé’s third...
Feb 17, 2011 / Eric M. ArmstrongMonsters (2010)
The most common mistake made by first-time directors is to cram every film school trick and cutting edge idea into that debut film. A bloated, pretentious, insufferable and flashy effort is often the...
Jan 21, 2011 / Eric M. ArmstrongRecent Articles
- Review: ‘A War’ explores war’s quiet, forgotten horrors
- TMA FilmCast #33 — Vera Chytilova and the Czech New Wave
- The fantasist: The comic art of Woody Allen
- Tribeca picks up North American rights to ‘Misery Loves Comedy’ at Sundance
- TMA FilmCast #32 — Alison Frank interviews Ana Geislerova
- ‘Grand Budapest Hotel’ tops Online Film Critics Awards
- TMA FilmCast #31 — Alison Frank reports from 67th Locarno Film Fest
- 5 ½ hour film dominates awards at Locarno
- Shorts at #Locarno67: meditation vs testing the audience’s patience
- ‘The Fool’: A modern propaganda film
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