During a time when American independent cinema either grunts elliptically under moody skies or chatters banally cross-legged on the living room floor, the purposeful, probing dialogue in Yen Tan's "Ciao" feels like a throwback to an entirely different reality. When characters talk in "Ciao," they ar...
Read More »When Syd Nathan, the CEO of King Records, died in 1968, James Brown, the label's greatest star, bought the desk from Nathan's office and had it fitted with a gold plaque reading "I Remember the Man Syd Nathan." Nathan was white, and Brown boastfully black--so how to account for this? If we were to b...
Read More »"Politics is theater," observes Harvey (Sean Penn) in Gus Van Sant's terrific "Milk." And sometimes, of course, theater -- or cinema -- is politics. When they first embarked on this project, Van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black could never have anticipated that 2008 would see the election of...
Read More »The least one could ask of a wish-fulfillment fantasy film is a little buoyancy and breeziness. Yet for all its good-natured intentions, Tom Gustafson's "Were the World Mine," in which a put-upon small-town gay teen converts his hopelessly straight town (including his corn-fed jock crush) to the pin...
Read More »You would think that a cross-cultural, cross-religious lesbian romance should have enough built-in conflict to sustain an 80-minute feature, but Shamim Sarif's "I Can't Think Straight" slumps and stretches its way from its first uninspired set piece, an engagement party for Jordanian-Christian Tala ...
Read More »One can't accuse director Yair Hochner of not giving his target audiences what we want: in the opening fifteen minutes of the Israeli filmmaker's ensemble dramedy of hook-ups and hang-ups among a small group of gay men in Tel Aviv, he fills the screen with all manner of groping titillation. As one e...
Read More »Full disclosure: I have never read any of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels. I have never seen any of the blockbuster movies based on her series. That I plan to never do so is not entirely because of any perceived intellectual and emotional poverty of these books and movies--I know plenty of smart ...
Read More »Intended as a meditation on mortality and morality, Vadim Glowna's adaptation of a Yasunari Kawabata novel simultaneously strives towards portentous poeticism and thriller intrigue, but falls more into tawdry B-movie territory instead. Written, directed, and produced by the German filmmaker, who a...
Read More »Though it often seems the nadir of schmaltz and sentimentality, the Hollywood Christmas movie has always been a bit bipolar. From "A Christmas Story" to "Gremlins," "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" to (undoubtedly) the forthcoming "Four Christmases," the subgenre requires a course of dysfunct...
Read More »A noisy, sub-Dickens update on the romantic tramp's tale, "Slumdog Millionaire" zips around a boy's hard-luck life with a strange verve. Ragtag children run through a labyrinthine Indian shantytown with a police officer in hot pursuit. Two boys ride atop a moving train, hanging upside down over the ...
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“@ThePlaylist: Watch: Solid New Trailer For 'The Wolverine,' Plus Two New Character Posters http://t.co/mdGKyg2cft via @indiewire” HOLLY!
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RT @ThePlaylist: Watch: Solid New Trailer For 'The Wolverine,' Plus Two New Character Posters http://t.co/GQJhcV05Ah via @indiewire
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Watch: Solid New Trailer For 'The Wolverine,' Plus Two New Character Posters http://t.co/GQJhcV05Ah via @indiewire
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anyone has contact for @indiewire team at cannes2013. please private message me. collaboration ideas.
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