We've got issues.
Nearly every brief summary of Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone borders on the absurd, or at least sounds mawkishly sentimental: A young man, mostly unemployed and recently in charge of his five-year-old son, strikes up a relationship with a killer-whale trainer who is terribly injured in a freak accident. It sounds like a story that will veer into sentimental territory early, overflowing with reminders about the fragility and beauty of life. Continue reading
David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, now heavy under the weight of award-season expectations, is trying to be one (or more) of the following three things: 1. A romantic comedy; 2. A movie about mental illness, and 3. A peculiar send-up of one or both of these options. Continue reading
If you’re hoping for a full, deep understanding of the founding and success of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill W. probably won’t be the film you’d like it to be. A personal, occasionally patchy documentary, Bill W. sticks close to its subject: Bill Wilson, one of the founders of AA. Continue reading
Within a minute of Zero Dark Thirty, I was in tears. Director Kathryn Bigelow doesn’t pull punches, and the film’s dark-screen open is no exception: It leaves the images to your imagination as the audio gives you scared, horrified, frantic voices. I assume these are re-creations of audio from 9/11. If they’re not, I don’t want to know. Continue reading
Léos Carax’s baffling, magical Rorschach blot of a film, Holy Motors, is a magic mirror: It gives you what you want from it. If you think it’s funny, you’ll be amused; if you think it’s serious, you’ll be somber. Continue reading
2013 will be the year of … more comic book-based films, more action flicks and more zombie apocalypse movies, not to mention sequels, more sequels and reboots: Man of Steel (another Superman reboot), The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (the second film of the trilogy), Jack Ryan (a second reboot of the Tom Clancy franchise), A Good Day to Die Hard (Bruce Willis’ fifth time as Mr. McClane), World War Z (Brad Pitt fights zombies), Pacific Rim (robots vs. Continue reading
The Hobbit is not a particularly large book. It’s a friendly size, a book that a kid can read happily, without tripping over the endless pages of description — and walking — that fill The Fellowship of the Ring. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is not the same size. The first film in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy pulls from Tolkien’s seemingly endless trove of Middle-Earth lore, filling out An Unexpected Journey until it’s more of a war story than the sprightly adventure on which it’s based. Continue reading
Taylor Guterson’s quietly likable debut feature, Old Goats, is a very Northwestern film — damp, relaxed, full of the mellow charms of its Bainbridge Island setting and featuring more cups of coffee than you can count. The film showcases three old goats, each wrestling with age in a specific way: Bob (Bob Burkholder), who’s just written a memoir detailing his colorful life and plentiful sexual conquests, can hardly hold still; he’s constantly asking friends for a ride or offering unsolicited advice on their futures. Continue reading
The first half hour of Atonement director Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina is such a joy to watch, I began to doubt my expectations of the story. This has a tragic ending, doesn’t it? Terrible things are going to happen? For that matter, unfortunate things are happening in the first act, but the clever way they’ve been pieced together is a magical distraction, and appropriately so. Continue reading
Lincoln, contrary to what its name implies, is not a defining portrait of a man, though Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance as Abraham Lincoln is one of his defining roles. Stooped, quiet, introverted, exhausted, brilliant and prone to making his point via stories, Day-Lewis’ Lincoln is the calm center to a complex and flawed film about the 16th president — and about the role of politics in America’s terrible relationship with race. Continue reading