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Reviews: December 2007 Archives
"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
By Matt Singer on 12/24/2007
By Matt Singer IFC News [Photo: Johnny Depp in "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," Paramount Pictures, 2007] Just in time for Christmas, director Tim Burton is painting theaters across the country red and green: red with gallons of movie blood, green with the faces of queasy moviegoers when they discover just what kind of gorefest they've wandered into. Burton's turned Steven Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's musical "Sweeney Todd" into a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie for the Schubert Alley set. Squeamish theater fans take note: it's "A Bucket of Blood and Barbasol." The story remains largely unchanged from... MORE »
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"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
By Matt Singer on 12/24/2007
Filed under: Reviews, ReviewsBy Matt Singer IFC News [Photo: Johnny Depp in "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," Paramount Pictures, 2007] Just in time for Christmas, director Tim Burton is painting theaters across the country red and green: red with gallons of movie blood, green with the faces of queasy moviegoers when they discover just what kind of gorefest they've wandered into. Burton's turned Steven Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's musical "Sweeney Todd" into a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie for the Schubert Alley set. Squeamish theater fans take note: it's "A Bucket of Blood and Barbasol." The story remains largely unchanged from... MORE »
"There Will Be Blood"
By Matt Singer on 12/24/2007
Filed under: Reviews, ReviewsBy Matt Singer IFC News [Photo: Daniel Day-Lewis in "There Will Be Blood," Paramount Vantage, 2007] "There Will Be Blood," the title promises. But it never really comes, at least not in the sort of quantities we've seen in other movies this fall, like "No Country For Old Men" or "Sweeney Todd." In the film's climax, its protagonist, oilman Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) tells his antagonist, preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), that he drinks "the blood of the land" every day. There's something to that symbolism, I think. Most of this man's transgressions are subterranean, lurking out of view of... MORE »
"There Will Be Blood"
By Matt Singer on 12/24/2007
Filed under: Reviews, ReviewsBy Matt Singer IFC News [Photo: Daniel Day-Lewis in "There Will Be Blood," Paramount Vantage, 2007] "There Will Be Blood," the title promises. But it never really comes, at least not in the sort of quantities we've seen in other movies this fall, like "No Country For Old Men" or "Sweeney Todd." In the film's climax, its protagonist, oilman Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) tells his antagonist, preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), that he drinks "the blood of the land" every day. There's something to that symbolism, I think. Most of this man's transgressions are subterranean, lurking out of view of... MORE »
"Youth Without Youth"
By Matt Singer on 12/10/2007
Filed under: Reviews, ReviewsBy Matt Singer IFC News [Photo: "Youth Without Youth," Sony Pictures Classics, 2007] Francis Ford Coppola clearly finds something very cinematic in the idea of someone who not as old as they look. Why else would he make "Jack," a movie about 45-year-old Robin Williams as a fifth grader, and now "Youth Without Youth," about a decrepit linguistics professor named Dominic Matei who receives the gift of a second life from an errant bolt of lightning? Oddly, though Coppola and Matei are both intellectually curious men, they seem strangely disinterested in this incredible turn of events. Imagine if Peter Parker... MORE »
"Youth Without Youth"
By Matt Singer on 12/10/2007
Filed under: Reviews, ReviewsBy Matt Singer IFC News [Photo: "Youth Without Youth," Sony Pictures Classics, 2007] Francis Ford Coppola clearly finds something very cinematic in the idea of someone who not as old as they look. Why else would he make "Jack," a movie about 45-year-old Robin Williams as a fifth grader, and now "Youth Without Youth," about a decrepit linguistics professor named Dominic Matei who receives the gift of a second life from an errant bolt of lightning? Oddly, though Coppola and Matei are both intellectually curious men, they seem strangely disinterested in this incredible turn of events. Imagine if Peter Parker... MORE »
"Badland"
By Matt Singer on 12/03/2007
Filed under: Reviews, ReviewsBy Matt Singer IFC News [Photo: "Badland," Arcangelo Entertainment Inc., 2007] "Badland"'s writer-director Francesco Lucente clearly feels strongly about the Iraq War and its impact on returning veterans. But perhaps he feels a bit too strongly. There's an old expression about how people making decisions should "remove emotion from the equation," and I think Lucente could have benefited from following that advice. There's potential here, but it's marred by a clunky screenplay that emphatically hammers its point home over and over again for 160 endless minutes. Jerry (Jamie Draven) is an Iraq vet struggling to make ends meet in a... MORE »
"Badland"
By Matt Singer on 12/03/2007
Filed under: Reviews, ReviewsBy Matt Singer IFC News [Photo: "Badland," Arcangelo Entertainment Inc., 2007] "Badland"'s writer-director Francesco Lucente clearly feels strongly about the Iraq War and its impact on returning veterans. But perhaps he feels a bit too strongly. There's an old expression about how people making decisions should "remove emotion from the equation," and I think Lucente could have benefited from following that advice. There's potential here, but it's marred by a clunky screenplay that emphatically hammers its point home over and over again for 160 endless minutes. Jerry (Jamie Draven) is an Iraq vet struggling to make ends meet in a... MORE »
"Revolver"
By Matt Singer on 12/03/2007
Filed under: Reviews, ReviewsBy Matt Singer IFC News [Photo: "Revolver," Samuel Goldwyn Films, 2007] "We are all approval junkies. We're all in it for the slap on the back," one character helpfully informs us in Guy Ritchie's "new" film "Revolver." Ritchie will have to look elsewhere for any backslapping, but would you settle for some knee-slapping over this laughably crummy conman thriller and "Kabbalist's Guide to Chess" instructional video? This long-shelved project — which premiered in the U.K. over two years ago — follows a crook named Jake Green (Jason Statham) with an annoying penchant for waxing philosophical in voiceover as he tries... MORE »
"Revolver"
By Matt Singer on 12/03/2007
Filed under: Reviews, ReviewsBy Matt Singer IFC News [Photo: "Revolver," Samuel Goldwyn Films, 2007] "We are all approval junkies. We're all in it for the slap on the back," one character helpfully informs us in Guy Ritchie's "new" film "Revolver." Ritchie will have to look elsewhere for any backslapping, but would you settle for some knee-slapping over this laughably crummy conman thriller and "Kabbalist's Guide to Chess" instructional video? This long-shelved project — which premiered in the U.K. over two years ago — follows a crook named Jake Green (Jason Statham) with an annoying penchant for waxing philosophical in voiceover as he tries... MORE »
"Billy the Kid"
By Matt Singer on 12/03/2007
Filed under: Reviews, ReviewsBy Matt Singer IFC News [Photo: "Billy the Kid," Elephant Eye Films, 2007] The first thing we notice about Billy is his eyes, because they never stop moving. When we first meet our titular 15-year-old hero, he's seated in the backseat of a moving car, making jokes and chatting up a storm. But if he's acting like he's comfortable in front of the camera, his eyes tell a different story, darting left to the car window and right to the person behind the camera; up to the ceiling, down to his feet. Funny as he is, there's maybe something just... MORE »
"Billy the Kid"
By Matt Singer on 12/03/2007
Filed under: Reviews, ReviewsBy Matt Singer IFC News [Photo: "Billy the Kid," Elephant Eye Films, 2007] The first thing we notice about Billy is his eyes, because they never stop moving. When we first meet our titular 15-year-old hero, he's seated in the backseat of a moving car, making jokes and chatting up a storm. But if he's acting like he's comfortable in front of the camera, his eyes tell a different story, darting left to the car window and right to the person behind the camera; up to the ceiling, down to his feet. Funny as he is, there's maybe something just... MORE »
"Innocence," "Drunken Angel"
By Michael Atkinson on 12/02/2007
Filed under: On DVD, ReviewsBy Michael Atkinson IFC News [Photo: "Innocence," Leisure Time Features/Homevision, 2005] A semi-secret, anxiety-cranked daydream movie released briefly to a few American cities in 2005, and one of the most original French films of the decade, Lucile Hadzihalilovic's "Innocence" (2004) is pure code, metaphor and mystery, and at the same it's seethingly tangible. Derived from a (currently) untranslated Frank Wedekind story, and pulsing with conceptual potency, the movie feels genuinely sui generis, a verdant, ambiguous reverie on childhood, consciousness and oppression. It's all parable, all the time, a Rorschach-blot scenario played out in feminized Old World ritual: we're in a... MORE »
