Posts

I say with a smirk, a shrug, an ashamed mumble: I am a native of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And as a native, I could fill a book with its contradictions—somewhere between (sub)urban sprawl and rural scrub, equal parts an oasis of progressive cosmopolitanism and the “real America” of TV news B-roll footage featuring obese people ambling through malls. Instead, I’m confined to judging its representation in Miguel Arteta’s new movie, which posits The Crapids (in local parlance) as Sin City for ineffable dillweeds....

If a fortune materializes, Maxwell plans to round out a trilogy with another Shaara adaptation, but Copperhead is not that movie. It shares the same war as its subject, and lead Billy Campbell was in the previous films, but in every way its modest scale and talky contemplation almost seem to apologize for the hubris of Gods. “Copperhead” was derisory slang for Northerners who either supported the Southern cause or simply opposed the war, and Maxwell’s film follows a family of them in upstate New York whose fates become fatally tangled with a neighboring abolitionist family....

There is a scene in Benoît Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen in which Marie Antoinette (a haunting Diane Kruger), consumed by fear though she is warmed by a fire and seated in a room gleaming with satin and gold leaf, has enlisted help in digging jewels from their settings to better transport them on a planned escape from Versailles to Metz. When a pearl slips away and is lost in the shadows, it could be the doomed queen herself, torn from a glittering cage and cast into the darkness....

It’s high time we had a new definition of torture porn: torture not for an imaginary subject, but for the audience. Merely “hard-to-watch” will no longer suffice. If “torture porn” is too divisive, we could call it a “cinema of discomfort.” Somehow Francine, quite intentionally, I imagine, manages to render its brief 74-minute run time interminable, with minimal dialogue and an abundance of excruciatingly awkward social interactions as ex-con Francine (Melissa Leo) struggles to reintegrate into society after prison....

Any filmmaker undertaking a family portrait has to strike the right balance between conveying a very personal experience and fashioning a more broadly engaging narrative. In Papirosen, Gastón Solnicki rarely points the camera away from his Buenos Aires kinsfolk, even as they get ready in the morning and traipse around shirtless in the evening. It’s quite possible to settle comfortably into the viewpoint of his loving gaze and treat the film as a 74-minute compilation of gorgeous home movies....

Tony Gilroy’s The Bourne Legacy works enthusiastically against justifiably lowered expectations. For one thing, it’s the fourth film in the franchise and, let’s face it, when has that worked out? Jaws: The Revenge, Batman and Robin, Alien Resurrection, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Need we go on? And two, the film is missing Jason Bourne, since Matt Damon decided to take a pass this time out....

The Loneliest Planet begins without any image, only the vaguely sexual acoustics of creaking floorboards and desperate human gasps. The abrasive sounds soon collide with the vision of a pale nude body, gender and age blurred by the velocity of its violent leaps in struggle against unknown elements. The jarring opening incisively evokes vulnerability—and soon intimacy, as another figure appears with a pitcher of warming water to make the world a little less cold and threatening....

Does producing an online “pre-make” of Transformers: Age of Extinction disqualify me from writing an impartial review, or does it qualify me more than most? A bit of both, perhaps. My making the video essay Transformers: The Premake was driven in part by the sense that writing a conventional review of Age of Extinction would be a superfluous exercise, given how such franchise blockbusters have effectively pushed film criticism to the margins....

Lynn Shelton’s fourth and latest feature, Your Sister’s Sister, again pairs her with Mark Duplass, for a surprisingly rigorous examination of the boundaries separating friendship and romance. 2009’s Humpday scrutinized the concept of bromance with an intensity perhaps unmatched by any movie since Ken Russell’s Women in Love—but Shelton’s pseudo-naturalist repertoire of meandering dialogue (littered with “awesome”’s and “dude”’s), obligatory-feeling party scenes, and handheld DV cinematography (shoestring budget plainly visible), is night-and-day with Russell’s arsenal of delirious excess and unfettered carnality....

In 2009, anything shot through old lenses is bound to find a home in the hearts of at least a few film lovers. “Unwanted” specular highlights and veiling glare are treasured imperfections, and day for nights and unreal night-lighting are happily tolerated or even overlooked. Every piece of predigital cinema now seems to be cherished, and in the joyously inflationary economy of Internet cinephilia, where every corner of the past is being busily rummaged, maestros and masterpieces are proliferating....

Lucas Belvaux’s chilly new film—the title is French for “kidnapping”—is based on the 1978 case of Edouard-Jean Empain, a French-Belgian industrialist who was seized and held for two months. After aggressive police action, Empain was released without any ransom being paid—but minus a finger. Belvaux takes the real-life scenario, including details such as the sliced-off digit and Empain’s confinement in a tent put up inside a tunnel hideaway, and crafts an evenhanded procedural that becomes a not entirely persuasive parable of power and emasculation....

The Tarnished Angels “And, you know, people remember that scene.” —Howard Hawks on Dorothy Malone’s one scene in The Big Sleep In a movie filled with memorable scenes, people do remember that one. In her first speaking role, opposite Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe, Dorothy Malone more than holds her own. As Marlowe questions her about the comings and goings across the street, the dynamic morphs quickly into a two-sided come-on....

The Hidden Horror excels as a genre of the grotesque and of excess, whether it’s expressed through atmosphere, through violence, or through twisting our moral expectations. Arriving at the tail end of the 1980s horror boom, The Hidden (1987) takes the horror genre and cross-breeds it with science fiction and action adventure. Joining the likes of Predator, Dead Heat, and Alien, the result is a work of pure genre fantasy awash in detailed special effects and over-the-top (though not disturbing?...

The first Academy Awards, bestowed in 1929 upon films released in 1927 and early 1928, demonstrated real anxiety about leveling the playing field for judging the “Best.” The Jazz Singer was only given a separate, special award to recognize its watershed technical achievement, effectively disqualifying it from races where it might have been a slam-dunk, such as Best Engineering Effects or even Best Picture). The treatment of Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus was even stranger....

Wild Boys of the Road This fall, the name William A. Wellman will briefly flit across screens in multiplexes worldwide, as it tends to reappear every time A Star Is Born is remade. It remains to be seen how much of Wellman’s 1937 original with Janet Gaynor and Frederic March will be recognizable in Bradley Cooper’s Lady Gaga–centered fourth iteration, but the eternal return of that film, for which Wellman also provided story architecture and other screenplay essentials, serves to reinforce the particular deathlessness of an auteur who has been an appealing subject for reevaluation....

This week on the podcast, FC editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute sat down with Kaleem (who’s also a Film Comment contributor) to discuss our recent home-viewing—which, as it turned out, included a lot of Palestinian cinema. From the agitprop of Mustafa Abu Ali’s 1974 film They Do Not Exist, to the diasporic longing of Basma Alsharif’s Home Movies Gaza (2013), to the biting satire and media criticism of Elia Suleiman, the conversation covered a lot of fascinating ground....

Devika and Clint were a little less considerate to each other: Clint gifted Devika the toxic 1979 football drama North Dallas Forty, while Devika gifted Clint her childhood favorite, Baby’s Day Out, a madcap live-action cartoon about a sadistic baby running wild in the streets. Movie Gifts, or Movie Torture? Listen to find out. MUBI is offering a 30-day free trial for all Film Comment Podcast listeners. Get access to the special offer here, and be sure to learn more about how you can get a free ticket to a theater each week with MUBI GO, included with your subscription, here....