Monthly Archives: May 2012

Sometime in between playing his pivotal role as Nick Fury in Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, starring as Martin Luther King, Jr. on Broadway, and gearing up for Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Samuel L. Jackson decided to star in and executive produce this little noir-ish exercise from Canadian director David Weaver. It’s difficult to understand why, because with the exception of one especially shocking plot twist about an hour in, there’s nothing in this film that hasn’t been done at least ten-thousand times previously—and at least nine-thousand of those films did it better…

The Samaritan is playing now in limited release. You can read my full review at Film Journal International.

To help look at what is missing from the equation in The Avengers, it might be instructive to consider another sure-fire success that also opened in American theaters on May 4. There aren’t any indications that The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has anything in common with The Avengers, except in one critical area: a nearly complete lack of creative risk-taking…

Both The Avengers and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel are playing around the world right now, though likely not in the same theater. You can read my essay “This Is All There Is: The Boredom of Lessened Expectations” at Short Ends and Leader.

After making so many films about basically decent people, it’s good to know that Richard Linklater had some Hitchcock in him. In his deft comedy Bernie, Linklater brings not just the winsome touch that’s made his lighter work like The School of Rock so broadly appealing but also a more acidic and satirical tone that darkens the shade under the bright Texas sun. Hitch would have sharpened his hooks more, particularly for a film set in such a busybody-riddled small town, but he would have appreciated Linklater’s steady accumulation of detail and grievances, not to mention the resolutely straightforward handling of the murder itself. What Linklater brings to this curious and fact-based story, which just about no other American filmmaker of the moment could, is his expansive sense of character and genial lack of judgment. This is a film about a really nice guy. A murderer, for sure, but just the nicest murderer you’re ever likely to meet…

Bernie is playing now in limited release; check it out. You can read my full review at filmcritic.com.

The creator of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly,” two iconic if underperforming TV series that played with familiar tropes like the high-school melodrama and the western before turning them inside-out, Joss Whedon might at first have seemed like a surprising choice for The Avengers. After all, as Whedon points out, “Buffy” wasn’t a ratings smash—“unless you’re the WB, which nobody is anymore.” Also, while his 2008 online comic musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog did feature a cast of superheroes and supervillains, it was an online comic musical whose entire budget would seem like a rounding error compared to that of Marvel and Disney’s May 4 release, The Avengers…

You can read my full profile of and interview with Joss Whedon at Film Journal International.

It’s tempting to look for easy sociological explanations for the mini-bubble in films about cults and small extremist groups. Such reasons aren’t likely to be found, beyond the broadening disinclination of people in the West (no matter how quickly they’ll “join” a social media group) to be members of classically cohesive collectives like churches, the Rotary Club, or even bowling leagues. Zal Batmanglij’s canny and suspenseful head-knotter Sound of My Voice initially seems of a piece with films like Martha Marcy May Marlene, United Red Army, and the new festival film First Winter. It, too, revolves around a small gang of earnest believers following a leader whose motives are suspect at best. Where Batmanglij’s film stands apart is in its unalloyed skill and confidence — this is one of the most assured feature debuts in recent memory — and in his ability to turn this exploration of cult indoctrination into both a profound character study and a nail-biting thriller. But for a conclusion that arrives long before the audience is ready for it to be over with, this would have been the runaway indie hit of the year… 

Sound of My Voice is playing now in limited release. You can read my full review at filmcritic.com.