Despicable Coco Predators (Weekly Links)

Noomi Rapace: girl who played with firearms

Reviews I wrote for the Herald this week.

Women Without Men. “A residual ability to haunt.”

Predators. “Fearsome tusked dogs.”

Despicable Me. “The timing is off.”

[Rec] 2. “Some nice jolts along the way.”

The Girl Who Played with Fire. “From one farfetched situation to the next.”

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky. “A certain dreadful tendency of the European art movie.”

Johanna. “It has the ‘What on Earth am I watching?’ appeal.”

And you are required to watch the new “music video” for Rotten, which will likely leave you with an irresistible urge to order the brand-new issues (and the trade paperback of the first six issues), all coming out soon.

No KUOW appearance this week, thanks to a 10 a.m. screening of Predators on Wednesday, during my usual time slot. Yes, 10 a.m.: not the ideal time for a Predators movie (and yet it still worked).

Movie Diary 7/7/2010

Predators (Nimrod Antal, 2010). Definitely traces of producer Robert Rodriguez here, to good end. Some pretty tough cast members. And there are predators. (full review 7/9)

Johanna (Kornel Mundruczo, 2005). Hungarian film, a Cannes 2005 leftover getting a small release. An all-singing variation on Joan of Arc, set in the dingiest hospital since The Kingdom. Strange vagaries of film distibution: this film’s excellent star, a blond actress with the Karloffian name Orsi Toth, also stars in another movie opening in Seattle this weekend; see below. (full review 7/9)

Women Without Men (Shirin Neshat, 2009). The stories of four women in Iran at the moment of the notorious coup d’etat in 1953, suggesting that women had a grisly time before and after the event – their bodies and spirits at the mercy of men in both cases. (full review 7/9)