Side Street (Anthony Mann, 1949). Stunning filmed-on-location shots of Manhattan, arranged around the uncompelling Farley Granger. Comedown from Mann’s string of noirs leading up to it, but a good sense of momentum.
King & Country (Joseph Losey, 1964). Military court-martial in the trenches of World War I, superbly directed by Losey even if the material is [...]
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More reviews for the Herald.
Breakfast with Scot.
Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine.
Frontrunners.
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A few mid-week reviews from the Herald. More Friday.
Milk.
Australia.
Transporter 3.
Four Christmases.
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Frontrunners (Caroline Suh, 2008). Documentary on the race for student body president at New York’s elite Stuyvesant High School, a place for gifted kids. Given the evidence, the future Nobel Prize winners are apparently not in the competition this year. (full review 11/28)
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Der Brennende Acker, aka Burning Soil (F.W. Murnau, 1922). Did Paul Thomas Anderson watch this before making There Will be Blood? Because aside from the spectre of an oil derrick in the middle of the “Devil’s Field,” there are some powerful shots of people dominating screen space that might have come straight out of PTA’s [...]
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The Quiller Memorandum (Michael Anderson, 1966). A Cold War movie in which almost nothing happens, scripted by Harold Pinter, with George Segal, Senta Berger and Alec Guinness. There were other bitter spy movies that reduced things way, way down (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Kremlin Letter, for two), but this [...]
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Movies I reviewed this week for the Herald. Kind of a strange moment when I find myself favoring a teenybopper vampire movie over an anointed Danny Boyle darling, and a Jean-Claude Van Damme picture is really interesting.
Twilight.
Slumdog Millionaire.
Bolt.
JCVD.
A Christmas Tale.
Days and Clouds.
Obscene.
Fuel.
And I talk to KUOW-FM’s Jeannie Yandel about Twilight and Slumdog; the movie part begins [...]
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Defiance (Edward Zwick, 2008). Casting Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell as brothers is an automatic point of interest. A photographic challenge: how to vary the feel of a movie that takes place almost entirely in the same forest. (full review 1/16)
Transporter 3 (Olivier Megaton, 2008). Another unbeatable concept, more undeliverable dialogue. (full review 11/26)
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Frost/Nixon (Ron Howard, 2008). One thing missing, but it’s key: Nixon’s self-pitying laugh. (full review 12/12)
Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008). It’s a Baz Lurhmann movie. (full review 11/26)
Four Christmases (Seth Gordon, 2008). You may say that nothing could be as bad as this movie’s trailer, which I have surely seen 17 times now. You would be right. (full review [...]
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