Tag: Sarah Polley

Best Movies of 2013: First Take

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Festivals, Film - NewLeave a comment

bestfilmtv2013-films

Since it’s a brand new year already featuring its own share of miserable, do-I-have-to-go-out-there? weather, what better time to sit back and figure out what exactly was the year that was? Film-wise, that is.

I contributed to a few of those lists at different websites this month. Over at PopMatters, you can see their gargantuan Top 35 films list here; they’ve also produced similar lists broken out into DVDs and foreign/indie films. I also contributed to their sections on the year’s worst films, and best female and male performances.

Sarah Polley's 'Stories We Tell'
Sarah Polley’s ‘Stories We Tell’

Also, the writers for Film Racket published their own individual Top 10 lists here. My list is something of a first draft that I’ll be going back over and redoing for the publication (hopefully later this month) of the new edition of Eyes Wide Open 2013: The Year’s 25 Greatest Movies (and 5 Worst). Here’s the short version:

  1. Stories We Tell
  2. 12 Years a Slave
  3. Gravity
  4. Before Midnight
  5. Fruitvale Station
  6. A Touch of Sin
  7. August: Osage County
  8. Gimme the Loot
  9. Room 237
  10. Captain Phillips

New in Theaters: ‘Stories We Tell’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment
Sarah-Polley-Stories-We-Tell
Sarah Polley films the film in ‘Stories We Tell’

storieswetell-posterWith her films Away From You and Take This Waltz, Sarah Polley has proven to be a ridiculously sharp and gimlet-eyed young filmmaker—who’s also an accomplished actress, should she ever want to return to it.

In her newest, Stories We Tell, Polley digs into the not-so-hidden secrets of her family history using a variety of methods: self-aware techniques, contradictory stories, re-created “home movie” footage, and plenty of dry humor. It’s a wonderful piece of work all things told, honest and playful and curiously wise.

Stories We Tell opens on Friday. My review is at Film Racket, here’s part of it:

To understand how memory is fluid, just ask two relatives to recall the same incident. More often than not, their recollections will have major discrepancies. Next, throw in more family members from different generations, and layer onto that a mealy mix of secrets; pretty soon a simple story turns into a Russian novel. That’s what Sarah Polley comes up with in her engrossing documentary exploration of how the bricks of memory are untidily piled together to create messy and incomplete personal stories, and out of those stories comes a life. Or a version thereof…

You can check out the trailer here:

New on DVD: ‘Take This Waltz’

On By chrisbarsantiIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Earlier this year, Sarah Polley’s heartsick love triangle melodrama Take This Waltz came out and was summarily and quite unfairly ignored by audiences. It’s out today on DVD, make sure not to miss it. My review is at PopMatters:

Somewhere inside this full-tilt lovesick blur is the kernel of a wildly uninteresting story. Woman in cozy relationship sans fireworks becomes attracted to new fella, with whom she has fireworks galore, but a dubious future. What to do: stay with husband or fly off with fling?  Play the good wife or bad mistress? There’s a spinning galaxy of clichés for writer/director Polley to choose from here, but somehow she skips past them (well, almost all) and delivers a shimmering and raw ode to the ferocity of desire and the heartbreak that so often follows it…

You can see the trailer here: