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Berlin Review: Matt Porterfield’s ‘I Used To Be Darker’ Has Empathy To Burn But Lacks Urgency
In between the big events that mark our lives -- the births, the deaths, the falling-in-loves, the breaking-ups, the runnings-away, the reconciliations -- there often exists a kind of pause moment. And it’s one such moment that Matt Porterfield’s Sundance-approved third feature, “I...
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Berlin Review: Joshua Oppenheimer’s 'The Act Of Killing' Is A Constantly Astounding, Terrifying Masterpiece
Holy fucking shit. All apologies for incoherence in the following review but having just emerged from Joshua Oppenheimer’s shattering documentary “The Act of Killing,” which screened here in Berlin this morning, I am still shaking. I may not be in the best state to write about it, in fact, but there...
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Review: Lifers Imitate Art In Prison-Set Shakespearean Docudrama 'Caesar Must Die'
In a prison in Rome, real-life convicts prepare to mount a production of William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” and as the night of the public performance draws nearer, their real lives and the play’s narrative conflate to the point of indistinguishability. So runs an approxi...
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Berlin Review: Wong Kar Wai's 'The Grandmaster' Is Occasionally Mesmerizing, Mostly Muddled
Perhaps the best place to begin a review of Wong Kar Wai’s “The Grandmaster” is at the end -- or a few minutes after. An epilogue of sorts, which happens suddenly and far enough into the credits that maybe half the audience was watching it from the stairs, serves as a pretty representative microcosm...
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Review: 'Identity Thief' Joylessly Steals Nearly Two Hours Of Your Life
When studios screen comedies for critics, there is typically an audience there, no matter how far in advance the screening. The reason, of course, is that an audience responding to a comedy in a positive way has a kind of transformative power – laughing and having fun with your fellow moviegoers is ...
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Review: 'Lore' Is An Evocative & Enigmatic Look At Post-WWII Moral & Emotional Fallout
With her beautiful and expressive debut feature film "Somersault," writer/director Cate Shortland established herself as a filmmaker with a sharp sense of the emotional complexities of young women. And now, eight years later, she returns with belated follow-up effort "Lore," anot...
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Review: Jet Li's 'The Sorcerer & The White Snake' Is Wuxia-Lite, With Bad Action & CG
It might have a highbrow reputation (something anyone who's caught one of the sidebars can confirm), but that doesn't mean that the organizers of the Venice Film Festival [ed. where we first saw the movie in 2011 -- this is a slightly edited reprint of that review] don't like to watch a little ass g...
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Review: 'A Glimpse Inside The Mind Of Charles Swan III' Displays The Flair & Flaws Of Roman Coppola's Approach
Roman Coppola may only be on his second directorial feature, but as a music video and commercials director, and as a writer and frequent Wes Anderson collaborator -- not to mention handling the second unit on various films from his famous family members -- he has certainly amassed a wealth of filmic...
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Göteborg Review: Volker Schlöndorff’s ‘Calm At Sea’ Is A Wrenching WWII Tale Told In Capable But Old-Fashioned Style
A story that is apparently very famous all over France -- that of Guy Moquet, a 17 year-old boy executed by the Nazis as part of a reprisal for the assassination of one of their officers -- forms the heart of veteran German director Volker Schlondorff’s latest film, which screened at the Göteborg In...
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Santa Barbara Review: 'Angels in Exile' Captures The Lives Of South African Street Kids & Treads New Path For Social Action Documentaries
In 2003, college student Billy Raftery took a surf trip to South Africa and made a stop in the city of Durban, finding more than just waves— he stumbled upon the subject for a documentary in Ariel, one the thousands of street kids who live on Durban’s Point Road. “Angels in Exile,” narrated by Charl...
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