September 2006
The week's critic wrangle: The king and queen.
By Alison Willmore on 09/29/2006
Filed under: Critic wrangle+ "The Last King of Scotland": Ah, we love the smell of award season on a Friday afternoon. Of Kevin Macdonald's portrait of Idi Amin: David Edelstein at New York writes that it is "phenomenally well directed," Stephanie Zacharek at Salon thinks that Macdonald, in what is his first feature, "seems to be in almost complete control of the material and its pacing." Slate's Dana Stevens is less ebullient: "'The Last King of Scotland' is wrenching to sit through, but in the end, it doesn't leave you with quite enough to think about"; LA Weekly's Ella Taylor suggests that... MORE »
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Anti-chemistry.
By Alison Willmore on 09/29/2006
We're still slogging through New York Film Festival screenings and write-ups — in the meanwhile here's a list of terrible buddy pairings from the IFC News team in honor of "The Guardian"'s bringing together of Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher. We personally went with 80s dance-thriller classic "White Nights," but couldn't find a good picture, so you get Pat Morita and Jay Leno instead.+ FEATURE: Our Favorite Buddy Pairings From Hell (IFC News)... MORE »
NYFF: "Offside."
By Alison Willmore on 09/28/2006
Jafar Panahi makes richly humanist films about Iran that never get distributed there. In interviews, he insists that he's a social filmmaker rather than a political one, but when you watch his films you realize how impossible it is to make such a distinction — there's no way to make a film about day-to-day life without also depicting the politics that shape it. "Offside," like his 2000 "The Circle," explores the plight of women in Iran, but unlike the latter film, "Offside" is lighthearted, optimistic, even kind of cute(sy). The girls in the film have been forced to pull... MORE »
NYFF: "Bamako."
By Alison Willmore on 09/28/2006
Abderrahmane Sissako's "Bamako" is a howl of rage and sorrow, a film that imagines the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and similar institutions being brought to trial for their actions against Africa in front of a makeshift tribunal in a courtyard in an quiet section of Mali's capital city. It's also profoundly didactic, and while we don't fault "Bamako"'s message or the passion behind it, we also can't recommend it as a film. The origins of the trial are never explained; the judges, lawyers and witnesses assemble in the open air each morning, taking their places at fold-out... MORE »
NYFF: "Woman on the Beach."
By Alison Willmore on 09/27/2006
Joong-rae, an established (though not so well-off) director, corralls his weak-willed friend Chang-wook into taking him to the seaside for a few days so that he can work on his overdue script. Chang-wook agrees on the condition that he can bring his girlfriend along. The three set off in the morning in the friend's car, listening to music written and performed by the girl, Moon-sook, who is a composer and clearly a big fan of Joong-rae's work. They have stilted getting-to-know-you conversations. They find a place to stay. And then, as they dawdle outside, Joong-rae tells Chang-wook that he... MORE »
NYFF: "Marie Antoinette."
By Alison Willmore on 09/27/2006
Marie Antoinette led a frivolous and extravagant (if sometimes unhappy) life before meeting up with the guillotine at age 37, and that seems to be why so many critics at Cannes were quick to assign the same qualities to Sofia Coppolla's film. Certainly "Marie Antoinette" doesn't circumscribe any typical biopic arc — the once Queen of France's defining duties were to exist as a political token, to be on constant display, to visit with other nobles to reassure them of their social status, and to produce an heir. Not particularly personal tasks, and, if the film has any argument, it's... MORE »
IFC News: Arthouse animation, appreciating The Rock.
By Alison Willmore on 09/22/2006
A look at what's new on the IFC News site: Aaron Hillis rounds up the latest in grown-up animation: "Finding life along the major festival circuit and even some noteworthy theatrical releases across the country, a fresh crop of animated features are demonstrating darker, more mature, and downright arthouse sensibilities." Matt Singer reviews "The Science of Sleep" and "Renaissance": "Stefane's character, too consumed by his dreams to consummate his relationship with neighbor Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), is a frustrating hero, too childishly whiny to command our sympathy. At times, 'The Science of Sleep' is downright maddening. At others, it is... MORE »
More wrangling: "Old Joy."
By Alison Willmore on 09/22/2006
+ "Old Joy": Kelly Reichardt's "Old Joy" is the kind of film you'd miraculously stumble across at a festival, so there's something a little strange about finding it in theaters, where we have to wonder if all the (well-earned) critical praise is likely to set up expectations of something more flashy. Samplings of praise: Manohla Dargis at the New York Times:There are roughly 90 viewing days left till Christmas. By that point most of the big studio movies will have opened for the consideration of the paying public and Academy Award voters, and untold numbers of words will have... MORE »
The week's critic wrangle: "All the King's Men," "The Science of Sleep."
By Alison Willmore on 09/22/2006
Filed under: Critic wrangle+ "All the King's Men": After being brutalized at its premiere in Toronto, Steven Zaillian star-packed adapation of Robert Penn Warren's novel (adapted once before in 1949) limps into theaters to thwacked around by the critics again. Jonathan Rosenbaum at the Chicago Reader complains that "the unfocused story is so bereft of any clear sense of period or location that the political melodrama sometimes seems to be taking place inside a cigar box." A.O. Scott at the New York Times states flatly that "[n]othing in the picture works," and goes on that "[i]t is rare to see a movie... MORE »
"The Science of Sleep."
By Alison Willmore on 09/22/2006
Stéphane and Stéphanie, the two eccentric waifs involved in "The Science of Sleep"'s semi-romance, are played Gael GarcÃa Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg, a pairing of immense cosmopolitan charm and attractiveness. That director Michel Gondry manages to make them seem wan and unappealing is remarkable — the film is a testament to the benefits of collaboration with others. Gondry has proven himself capable of apparently infinite visual inventiveness in his earlier films and his often brilliant music videos, and "The Science of Sleep" overflows with unforgettable set pieces, most representing the dreams of Stéphane, who has trouble distinguishing between sleep... MORE »
Odds: Thursday - Verhoeven and von Trier.
By Alison Willmore on 09/21/2006
Another quiet day. Via Gregg Goldstein at the Hollywood Reporter, Sony Pictures Classics has picked up the North American rights to Paul Verhoeven's World War II drama "Black Book (Zwartboek)":The film was roundly ridiculed among distributors at the Toronto International Film Festival as "'Schindler's List' meets 'Showgirls'" (the latter film, another type of camp drama, was notoriously directed by Verhoeven). Scenes often cited include the Jewish female lead character graphically dyeing her pubic hair blonde to infiltrate the Nazi party as a member of the resistance, captors dumping a vat of dung on her and several ribald sexual encounters.... MORE »
Odds: Wednesday - Jack and Bobby.
By Alison Willmore on 09/20/2006
Just a few things, as we're late to a dinner (and it's quiet today — ahhhhh). Trailer of the day: For Emilio Estevez's "Bobby," here. Jack Nicholson gets the cover of Rolling Stone, and yes, we're in awards season after all. Erik Hedegaard profiles the man:Lots of things are reverberating into the past around Jack Nicholson these days. For instance, the dildo-in-a-porno-theater scene he thought up for his new movie The Departed. The roots of it, you could argue, reach back twenty-five years, to 1981, when he was making The Postman Always Rings Twice, with Jessica Lange -- a... MORE »
Sven Nykvist, 1922-2006.
By Alison Willmore on 09/20/2006
Via Mattias Karen at the AP, "Oscar-winning filmmaker Sven Nykvist, who was legendary director Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer of choice, died Wednesday after a long illness, his son said. He was 83. Nykvist died at a nursing home where he was being treated for aphasia, a form of dementia, said his son, Carl-Gustaf Nykvist.""Sven and I saw things alike, thought things alike; our feeling for light was the same. We had the same basic moral positions about camera placement." —Ingmar Berkman in "Light Keeps Me Company"+ Cinematographer Sven Nykvist dies at 83 (AP)... MORE »
"Old Joy."
By Alison Willmore on 09/20/2006
So many films are adapted from novels that it becomes easy to equate the two, when the fact is the average feature buckles under the weight of a novel's worth of plot and characters. Kelly Reichardt's slight, splendid "Old Joy" is actually based on a short story by Jonathan Raymond, but it has a reflective and uniquely cinematic quality that doesn't seem to arise from any literary tradition at all. The minimal events that move the film from start to finish are surrounded by a wealth of subtext we're left to sift through, and our understanding of and empathy... MORE »
Odds: Tuesday - Cinema Scope, Cahiers.
By Alison Willmore on 09/19/2006
New Cinema Scope! Editor Mark Peranson calls this issue "the annual 'let's throw things together ahead of schedule, cross our fingers, and pray we're done in time'" one, and among the online goodies are Michael Sicinski's interview with Scott MacDonald, Robert Koehler on the "seven-disc-plus-booklet box set of the works of Norman McLaren produced by the National Film Board of Canada" and Christoph Huber on Vienna's New Crowned Hope Festival. While you're at it, there are also two new translated offerings on the Cahiers Du Cinema site: Cyril Neyrat writes about "Miami Vice" and attempts to crown Michael Mann... MORE »
The boys.
By Alison Willmore on 09/19/2006
At the Washington Post, Ellen McCarthy comes up with an amusingly hostile piece on "The Last Kiss" based around a phoner with Casey Affleck. Someone was not fond of the film, we take it?"I think one of the issues is, how do you make a relationship work when you didn't have any role models? A lot of people from our generation -- their parents are divorced and their friends' parents are divorced," he says. "And if you never saw a couple make it work, what guide do you have?"Hmmmm. That's interesting. Blame the folks who brought you into this... MORE »
Festival endings and beginnings.
By Alison Willmore on 09/18/2006
New York Film Festival press screenings start tomorrow, so we're trying with all our might to finish up other work beforehand. After tense negotiations ("Fine, you can have 'The Host,' but only if I get 'Inland Empire'!") we've divided up screenings with Matt Singer, so we hopefully won't drop completely out of sight for the next three-odd weeks. We'll be posting our own reviews here on the blog and gathering them on the IFC News site and trying not to run ourselves completely ragged — in the meanwhile, the meaningless Toronto awards are here; the People's Choice Award goes to... MORE »
"Confetti."
By Alison Willmore on 09/15/2006
Like the Christopher Guest films that provided its cinematic DNA, Debbie Isitt's improvised comedy "Confetti" is funnier in concept than in practice. Fortunately, the concept is elaborate enough to fill half the run-time with set-up: Three couples compete for best novelty theme wedding in a contest hosted by a bridal magazine, because, as the magazine's smarmy editor informs us "Not everyone wants their special day ruined by a gimmick...but some people do." Did you laugh? Is the idea of a sports-themed wedding overwhelmingly hilarious? How about a nudist wedding? The comedy doesn't get much sharper than that. The three couples... MORE »
The week's critic wrangle: "Dahlia," darling.
By Alison Willmore on 09/15/2006
Filed under: Critic wrangle+ "The Black Dahlia": Sorry, Mr. De Palma, but your "dark side of vintage Hollywood film" is averaging out worse with the critics than "Hollywoodland," with added sighs of disappointment — this one, everyone really really wanted to like. On the plus side, the Village Voice's J. Hoberman writes that "Although the action set pieces are impressive, the exposition is sluggish. For all the posh dollies, high angles, and Venetian-blind crisscross patterns, The Black Dahlia rarely achieves the rhapsodic (let alone the delirious)." Wait, that's the good side? At Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman, also fairly generous to the film,... MORE »
Janus.
By Alison Willmore on 09/14/2006
A little more network news: For those of you who email us about the channel as if we're in charge of programming in our spare time, here's something no one out there could find anything to complain about — IFC, in celebration of 50 years of Janus Films, will be airing three a night each Tuesday in October and November. Already on the schedule are the following:October 3rd"The Rules of the Game""L'Avventura""The 400 Blows" October 10th "The Seventh Seal""The Virgin Spring""Wild Strawberries" October 17th"Pandora's Box""Viridiana""Fists in the Pocket" October 24th"Le Jour Se Leve""Pepe Le Moko""The Wages of Fear"... MORE »
Meta.
By Alison Willmore on 09/13/2006
The Guardian has Dave Eggers interviewing Eric Idle and reminding us why we are often overwhelmed with the urge to punch him (Eggers) in the face ("Idle looked at the chair, but on that day the chair offered no answers."). The interview is on the occasion of the musical "Spamalot"'s London stage debut, and does have its moments:Idle had just finished giving a tour of his home, a sort of museum of Python paraphernalia. His basement is full of Python-themed toys, including various Holy Grail figurines and a Black Knight with removable limbs. There were Monty Python records and... MORE »
Lonely girls por vida.
By Alison Willmore on 09/13/2006
Mysterious internet kewpie doll/YouTube star Lonelygirl15 has scarcely had time to breathe in the media hype when the actress playing her and the aspiring filmmakers who created her were exposed. From Richard Rushfield and Claire Hoffman in the LA Times last Friday:Lonelygirl15 appears to be an innocent, home-schooled 16-year-old, pouring her heart out for her video camera in the privacy of her bedroom. But since May, her brief posts on the video-sharing site YouTube and the social networking hub MySpace have launched a Web mystery eagerly followed by her million-plus viewers: Who is this sheltered ingenue who calls herself... MORE »
Odds: Tuesday - Hefty reads and going against the grain.
By Alison Willmore on 09/12/2006
In the new issue of the Threepenny Review, there's a selection from Greil Marcus' new book, "The Shape of Things To Come: Prophecy and the American Voice," in which he writes about the America of "Twin Peaks." It's almost too sprawling and free-form to be called an essay, but it is a nice read:The film noir city seems to be Manhattan or Los Angeles. At the heart of the form, whether in the movies or in the crime novels inspired by them, just as the most emblematic noir story is that of the soldier back in his hometown after... MORE »
"The source of all life!"
By Alison Willmore on 09/12/2006
Stephanie Zacharek's Toronto dispatches at Salon are our new favorite thing. Today's, on "The Fountain":Part historical fantasy, part lovers-separated-by-death weeper, part New Age fever dream, "The Fountain" isn't truly horrible, just very, very silly. When [Hugh] Jackman plunges his dagger into the hairy bark of the Tree of Life, a viscous, milky substance trickles out -- the source of all life! Best to have a tissue handy for this kind of thing. Jackman plays a doctor-researcher type who's desperately trying to shrink a tumor in a lab monkey's head. But before that, he's a Spanish guy around the time... MORE »
In print.
By Alison Willmore on 09/12/2006
Critic David Thomson's decision to write a biography/analysis/meditation on Nicole Kidman seems both odd and rather ballsy, given that his previous biographies were of Orson Welles and David O. Selznick, both comfortably canonical and dead. Kidman is very much alive, and proving it by complaining in news outlets (like the Daily Mail) that Thomson only interviewed her once and neglected to inform her that the exchange was for a book he happened to be writing about her:According to the star's publicist Wendy Day: "Nicole has never met David Thomson. She has only spoken to him briefly on the phone... MORE »
The strange case of Mr. Lazarescu.
By Alison Willmore on 09/12/2006
Cristi Puiu's critical darling "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" was given a nominal theatrical release by Tartan Films back in April. We never came across the poster they created, so the DVD cover (the DVD went on sale today) came as a delightful surprise and a testament to the difficulties and sometime silliness of, you know, marketing. Calling the two-and-a-half hour Romanian film about the inability of a dying man to find assistance amidst an uncaring, inefficient national health care system "the most acclaimed comedy of the year" is...technically true, we suppose, in the same way that "The Good,... MORE »
TIFF in pieces.
By Alison Willmore on 09/11/2006
We don't see ourselves covering Toronto anytime soon — a good thing, because when we look over the festival we're seized with an overwhelming sense of panic. So! Many! Movies! We imagine rushing around trying to fit in seven screenings a day and staying up all night attempting to write them up, and by day three turning up dead in a Canadian gutter, the paramedics forced to use the Jaws of Life to pry the laptop out of our cold hands. Fortunately, there's plenty of Toronto coverage out there. Lots of snippets: At indieWIRE, Anthony Kaufman writes that "With... MORE »
Venice prizes, surprises.
By Alison Willmore on 09/11/2006
Film festivals, Affleck, what? We're still recovering and playing catch-up...in the meanwhile, the Venice prizes: GOLDEN LION for Best Film:"Sanxia Haoren (Still Life)" by Jia Zhang-Ke SILVER LION for Best Director:Alain Resnais for the film "Private Fears in Public Places" SILVER LION REVELATION:Emanuele Crialese for the film "Nuovomondo (Golden Door)" SPECIAL JURY PRIZE:"Daratt" by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun COPPA VOLPI for Best Male Actor:Ben Affleck in the film "Hollywoodland" by Allen Coulter COPPA VOLPI for Best Female Actor:Helen Mirren in the film "The Queen" by Stephen Frears MARCELLO MASTROIANNI AWARD for Best Young Actor:Isild Le Besco in the film "L’intouchable" by... MORE »
IFC News.
By Alison Willmore on 09/08/2006
We're out sick, so unless we make a remarkable recovery our reviews of "Hollywoodland" and "Man Push Cart" (both pretty meh) and the week's Critic Wrangle will have to wait until this weekend or Monday. In the meantime, why don't you take a look at the following pieces on IFC News?Matt Singer's guide to what's new in theaters this week. R. Emmet Sweeney's interview with "Man Push Cart" director Ramin Bahrani. Michelle Orange on the Mike Judge/"Idiocracy" mess. Our own piece profiling three filmmakers currently self-distributing their films. And IFC's Comic-con video special.... MORE »
Actresses, actors.
By Alison Willmore on 09/06/2006
We're still trying to sort out what irritated us so about Lynn Hirschberg's New York Times Magazine piece on Vera Farmiga and the difficulties of being a Serious Actress these days. There's much to choose from, between the strange mythologizing of Meryl Streep and prudish head-tossing at celebrity and beauty. For instance, this:Like Streep, who insisted on auctioning off all her designer costumes from “The Devil Wears Prada†for charity, Farmiga is wary of the red-carpet dress-up component of show business. Hollywood has always been the land of dreams, of gorgeous people in stunning clothes. But in the eras... MORE »
Incoming: Biopics, remakes, bans.
By Alison Willmore on 09/05/2006
Trailers: One for Steven Shainberg's near-fantastical Diane Arbus film "Fur," which premiered at Telluride this past weekend, here. One for "Killshot," which features an oddly hairdoed Mickey Rourke and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (!) as professional killers menacing Diane Lane and Thomas Jane (the film is based on an Elmore Leonard novel), here. And a teaser for Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" is here. Via Gregg Goldstein at the Hollywood Reporter, Doug Block's acclaimed autobiographical documentary "51 Birch Street" will be released by 2929 Entertainment's Truly Indie, and will open in New York on October 18th. Via the Guardian, Peter Jackson... MORE »
Quotables.
By Alison Willmore on 09/05/2006
Overblown and somewhat gossipy edition! "It is the most copied film in the history of cinema. It broke barriers that had existed since the inception of cinema."—Director Michael Winner on his 1974 Charles Bronson vehicle "Death Wish," via Paul Majendie at Reuters. "I feel I have always been somewhat politically engaged. I strongly encourage people of my age and generation to have a say and to vote, and to involve themselves in what's going on in the world, because they are living in it. I've always been like that but I keep it to myself. It's safer that way."—Lindsay... MORE »
"The Fountain" and "Idiocracy."
By Alison Willmore on 09/05/2006
The estimable David Hudson at Greencine Daily have been covering Venice so thoroughly we feel comfortable being lazy and not bothering at all. Still, worth a mention is the apparently dismal reception that greeted the premiere of Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain." Wire reports have the film being booed, and both Variety and the Hollywood Reporter are withering in their respective summations. Leslie Felperin in Variety:Greeted by booing at its first press unspooling, pic's hippy trippy space odyssey-meets- contempo-weepy-meets- conquistador caper starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz suffers from a turgid script and bears all the signs of edit-suite triage... MORE »
The week's critic ramble: Riding Alone in Mutual Appreciation.
By Alison Willmore on 09/01/2006
Also opening this week: The awesomely ridiculous-looking "Crank," Neil LaBute's enigmatic "The Wicker Man" remake, and Mike Judge's "Idiocracy." But no reviews for you (or us)! "Crank"'s press screening, at least here in New York, is today at 11am. "The Wicker Man" is infamously (well, infamously in our tiny entertainment news bubble) not being screened for critics. And "Idiocracy"? Is opening unheralded in a few cities today — New York is not one of them — sans even a website. Also, some documentary we may have mentioned before opens today. + "Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles": Mostly kind,... MORE »
Irony?
By Alison Willmore on 09/01/2006
Another "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" note (and apologies for all of the in-house messaging): As A.O. Scott correctly notes in his review of the filmWhen [Kirby] Dick submitted a cut of this film, it was slapped with an NC-17, an unsurprising outcome that led to some hilarious, Kafkaesque telephone conversations between him and Joan Graves, the chairwoman of the ratings board. IFC Films, which is not owned by a major studio and therefore not required to submit its releases to the association, is distributing the film without a rating.The MPAA still has that initial rating of an incomplete... MORE »
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