Tag: New York

New in Theaters: ‘Nobody Walks’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

With much less fanfare than greeted her HBO show Girls, Lena Dunham worked on Nobody Walks, a kind of lo-fi hipster / L.A. trash bed-hopping melodrama that gets creepier the closer you look at it. My full review is at PopMatters:

At the start of Nobody Walks, 20something New York artist Martine (Olivia Thirlby) gets off a plane in Los Angeles and promptly gets into a heavy make-out session with the handsome man putting her bags in his car. Right there in the parking garage, he begins unbuckling his belt and she puts her hand on his chest and tells him that it was really great talking to him on the plane, but…. He cocks a “can’t blame a guy for trying” look at her, and then gives her a lift. It’s an innocuous and seemingly funny scene, the kind of fumbling comedy you would expect from cowriter Lena Dunham…

Nobody Walks is already playing in limited release.

You can see the trailer here:

New in Theaters: ‘Cosmopolis’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Film - NewLeave a comment

Adapted by David Cronenberg from Don DeLillo’s prescient 2003 novel, Cosmopolis is set in a fantastical New York of the present or near-future, a nebulous universe that feels like a recent William Gibson novel—this might be the future, but it’s barely five minutes hence. Robert Pattinson plays Eric Packer, a 28-year-old wizard of some species of speculative, quantitative finance who has made his billions and now can’t seem to wait to set his entire universe on fire. He drifts through the city in a white limo that looks outside like all the others, but inside is a fully wired and soundproof command center that keeps him wired to his empire while sitting in traffic on the way to get a haircut…

The deadpan, crazed Cosmpolis opens tomorrow in limited release; seek it out when it comes to your town, there’s nothing else like it.

My full review is at Film Journal International.

The trailer is here:

New in Theaters: ‘2 Days in New York’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

If you’re looking to improve box office, it might make sense to replace Adam Goldberg with Chris Rock. As a leading man opposite co-star/writer/director Julie Delpy in her romantic comedy 2 Days in Paris, Goldberg chiseled a bit of comic gold, but he was hardly a draw for most moviegoers. Rock, who replaces him in 2 Days in New York, is a star with proven appeal, even if his on-screen timing has always been a poor cousin to his stage persona. But, as it turns out, this tradeoff is costly…

2 Days in New York opened last Friday; my full review is at PopMatters.

Trailer is here: