Aside from the fact that they’re lesbians, “The Kids Are All Right” assures us, Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening) are exactly like any other middle-class, middle-aged couple. Nic is a doctor, while Jules has stayed at home to raise the kids — Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson), both in high school…
One of enduring pleasures of the movies is that they’re a place to gaze at people who are larger and more beautiful than real life. And while there’s always been artifice involved in maintaining that illusion, has technology — HD, digital effects, and, for that matter, more prevalent plastic surgery — changed the degree to…
Matt: Don’t forget the other key element of that final moment of joy: as she’s dancing and smiling with Eli, Lindsay finally removes that old army jacket that’s been her armor (or is it her mask?) ever since her grandmother’s death. Throughout the pilot, and really the entire series, Lindsay struggles to find her place…
Reviewed at the 2010 New York Asian Film Festival. Hitoshi Matsumoto, a famous Japanese comedian whose work outside of the two features he’s directed I have to confess to being completely unfamiliar with, has sported some truly horrendous big-screen haircuts. In his impressively bizarre mockumentary “Big Man Japan,” Matsumoto played an ineffectual part time superhero…
As Tolstoy didn’t quite write, “Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own movie.” Inspired by “Dogtooth,” the new, critically acclaimed Greek film featuring what has to be a record-breakingly dysfunctional familial unit, this week’s IFC News podcast is all about the movies’ fondness for troubled, messed-up, maladjusted and flat-out…
Reviewed at the 2010 New York Asian Film Festival. “Confessions” is the latest from Tetsuya Nakashima, who in 2006 made “Memories of Matsuko,” my absolute favorite of the films I’ve seen over the years at the New York Asian Film Festival. “Matsuko” was all about the gaping divide between its peppy musical numbers and frenetic,…
Austin, TX’s Fantastic Fest is a film festival that earns its name — and it’s one of our personal favorites. The sixth annual incarnation of the festival will take place September 23-30, 2010, with the usual selection of sci-fi, horror, fantasy and strangeness from around the world. They’re made their first programming announcement today, highlighting…
Reviewed at the 2010 New York Asian Film Festival. You’d have to be ghoulish to want to see Jackie Chan, who’s now (a plenty spry) 56 years old, still trying anything like the hanging-off-helicopters, 100-foot-jump-without-a-net stunts that made him an unparalleled action star. But that raises a philosophical question: what’s a Chan movie without jaw-dropping…
With “Toy Story 3,” Pixar seems to have created the increasingly rare film that pleases the crowds and the critics alike, children and adults, cinephiles and casual moviegoers just looking for a good time. This week on the IFC News podcast, we talk about Pixar’s 15 years of feature film output (not to mention their…
“The Killer Inside Me” has, for many reasons, been compared to “American Psycho,” a film that does suggest there’s an underlying reality that you’re not seeing because you’re so inside the narrator’s head. Chris Hanley, one of the producers on this, was also a producer on “American Psycho,” so we had that conversation quite often…
Aside from having David Fincher on hand himself, it’s hard to imagine anyone better suited to offer insights into 2007′s “Zodiac” than Olivier Assayas. The Cahiers du Cinéma critic-turned-filmmaker just wrapped his own supersized adaptation of a violent true tale, “Carlos,” a five and a half hour epic about terrorist/revolutionary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known…
Lou Ford, the protagonist of “The Killer Inside Me,” cuts a violent swath through his home town while we ride with him the whole way down. Inspired by the film, this week’s IFC News podcast takes on antiheroes at the movies, looking at how they’ve become so prevalent that it’s rarer to see a classic…
Are remakes always awful? Is 3D doomed to forever remain just another gimmick to gouge more money out of theater-goers? Do only losers go to the movies alone? We’re feeling contrarian on this week’s IFC News podcast, in which we answers these pressing questions and many others based on popular internet wisdom, and find ourselves…
“Cropsey,” a documentary about the intersection of an urban legend about a menacing boogeyman with a real child murder case that took place in Staten Island, opens this Friday in New York. The film got us thinking about where cinema in general meets up with the modern mythology we pass around — which is why…
“Micmacs,” the new film from “Amelie” director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, may be set in modern day Paris, but stylistically it’s a throwback to older movies — particularly silent comedies and slapstick, with its elaborate, near wordless set pieces. “Micmacs” provided the inspiration for this week’s podcast, in which we talk about physical comedy, apparently both the…
This week’s “MacGruber” is one of the best “Saturday Night Live” movies ever made. Of course, given the competition, that’s not saying very much. It’s not easy to take a five minute sketch and turn it into a 90 minute feature and we know it’s not easy because almost every time Lorne Michaels and the…
Fans keep the movie industry alive: buying tickets, anointing stars, reading magazines and websites. But when movies put fans on-screen they’re often depicted in negative ways: threatening stars, demanding attention, murdering people who threaten their dreams. If a movie features a character defined by their fandom, odds are they’ve got some issues, be they psychological…
At a certain point in your life, there’ll be a moment in which you find yourself in a beautiful house, or behind the wheel of a large automobile, asking yourself well… how did I get here? Or at least that’s what the movies (and, of course, David Byrne) have taught us. This week on the…
Reviewed at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. Lee Isaac Chung’s first feature, the Rwanda-set “Munyurangabo,” was a minor sensation back in 2007 — at least, as much as a quiet, oblique film that scarcely saw theaters outside of the festival circuit can be. The film brilliantly captured how trauma lingers like almost imperceptible shivers, the…
Reviewed at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. A small, agreeable documentary with an awkwardly not-quite-in-English title, “Freetime Machos” tries to position itself as a sort of Finnish nonfiction Apatow-style bromance about guys whose slightly squishy outsides hide very squishy hearts. It’s not terribly successful on that front, but I’m not sure it needs to be.…
Reviewed at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. “brilliantlove,” directed by Ashley Horner, is a British hipster wish-fulfillment fantasy pretending to be a romance. Its lovers, Manchester (Liam Browne) and Noon (Nancy Trotter Landry), live in shabby paradise in a single-car garage on a hill. They have no visible means of supporting themselves, but they do…
Reviewed at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. “Open House” is a horror movie about a world where soulless monsters lurk everywhere, awaiting the slightest opportunity to prey on the weak and vulnerable — Los Angeles. Ba-dum ching! I’ll be here all week! But seriously, folks, there’s a germ of an idea to the film —…
In the new film “The Human Centipede (First Sequence),” an insane German doctor sews three people together to fulfill his dream of making a, well, human centipede. Is it the most extreme thing we’ve ever seen in a movie? What’s the appeal of seeking out images that push boundaries like this? This week on the…
Reviewed at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. In a remote area in western Finland, a tunnel that ultimately will be three miles long and 1,600 feet deep is being drilled into the bedrock. The site is called Onkalo, “hiding place,” and when it’s completed, sometime in 2100, it will serve as a permanent resting place…
