Monthly Archives: February 2011

Even the Rain is playing now in limited release and should expand over the next couple of months. Try to seek it out. You can read the full review at filmcritic.com.

The Psalm that introduces Xavier Beauvois’s lacerating elegy doesn’t leave much mystery as to where things are headed: “You shall die like men and fall like princes.” There is an air of predestination that clouds Of Gods and Men, giving it the feel of some ancient allegory told and retold by scholars throughout the ages…

Of Gods and Men opens today in limited release. You can read the full review at filmcritic.com.

Today’s entry from Filmology is The Wild Bunch (1969), Sam Peckinpah’s absurdly war-like elegy for the end of the Old West and for a time when bad guys could just head down Mexico-way whenever things got dicey.

My book, Filmology: A Movie-a-Day Guide to a Complete Film Education, is now for sale in both paperback and ebook formats.

For all the skittery flashbacks and paranoid atmospherics, there isn’t much to Unknown in the final reckoning—and this isn’t a bad thing. At least it doesn’t dig into the seeming metaphysical mystery suggested in early scenes, and its schematic screenplay, doesn’t quite abandon its more interesting questions, concerning identity and purpose. But a couple car chases and furniture-breaking fights later, the fact that Unknown is a Joel Silver production is increasingly apparent. Again, this is not the worst thing…

Unknown opens in wide release today. You can read the full review at PopMatters.

In 1948, in occupied Tokyo, a man walked into a branch of the Teikoku Bank and informed the workers present that he was a public health official there to inoculate them against an outbreak of dysentery. He dispensed a series of two liquid medicines to each of the 16 workers in attendance. Very soon after, the bank employees collapsed in writhing agony. The man gathered up some (but not all) the cash laying out on the desks and escaped. Twelve people died, and while a murderer was imprisoned, many believe that justice was never really done…

David Peace’s 2009 novel Occupied City has just been released in paperback, check it out. The full review is at PopMatters.

Lee Chang-dong’s perceptive drama Poetry, about a woman facing the onset of Alzheimer’s as well as a torrid family crisis, is keenly acted but meandering….

Poetry opens in limited release tomorrow. You can read the full review at Film Journal International.

Today’s entry from Filmology is The Lives of Others (2007), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s brilliantly paranoid, thrilling, nerve-jangling investigation of Cold War life in East Germany.

My book, Filmology: A Movie-a-Day Guide to a Complete Film Education, is now for sale in both paperback and ebook formats.

A book could have been made from the story of a single fighter plane alone. William D. Hartung’s Lockheed Martin exposé starts with a sharp and concise reckoning of how the company made the full-court press in order to keep its problematic F-22 Raptor fighter program alive. It’s a thrilling piece of journalism, combining deep background knowledge of the program’s particulars with a keen grasp of the political machinations that swirled around its long undeath…

Prophets of War is on sale now. You can read the full review at PopMatters.

In a film whose sole operating principle seems to be that its female co-stars share a resemblance, the audience is asked to sit still for roughly an hour until a sweet-natured college freshman finally figures out that her roommate is a psychopath. While it’s not unusual for viewers to figure such things out before a protagonist in a B-movie of this sort, Sonny Malhi’s screenplay takes her cluelessness to a truly stratospheric level. Much is made of the sweet-natured freshman, Sara, having just moved from Des Moines, which in the world of this film is a magical, mystical place where mental illnesses are unknown and violence a foreign concept…

The Roommate is playing pretty much everywhere in the known universe, for some reason. Read the full review at filmcritic.com.

It’s rarely fair to discuss the novel from whence a film has been adapted. Most viewers haven’t read the book, and so will be left out of the conversation. Even more frequently, the literary source is a mere point of departure, providing a framework plot and perhaps a mood, rather than details.

But when discussing Richard J. Lewis’ take on the late Mordecai Richler’s 1997 novel, Barney’s Version, it’s almost impossible not to discuss the source, if only to illustrate pale and confused the film is by comparison…

Barney’s Version is in theaters now. You can read the full review at PopMatters.