Tuesday 21 May
 
 

Dexter: The Seventh Season

There's no way to discuss the seventh and penultimate season of Showtime's hit Dexter without acknowledging how the previous year ended. Therefore, if you haven't finished the sixth season, stop reading now. You've got work to do.
05/21/2013 | Comments 0

Nightfall

As Simon Lam gets older, he gets better. The veteran actor has appeared in such in seminal HK action films of the 1990s as Once Upon a Time in China (opposite Jet Li) and Bullet in the Head (directed by John Woo); in the aughts, he graced audience and critical favorites Election and Ip Man.
05/20/2013 | Comments 0

Grand Duel

Lee Van Cleef enjoyed a secondary career in Italy cranking out spaghetti Westerns, with little regard to quality. However, 1972’s Grand Duel — aka The Big Showdown — is deserving of its Grand label. No wonder Quentin Tarantino borrowed its sweeping theme song by Luis Bacalov for Kill Bill; you'll recognize it in two notes.
05/20/2013 | Comments 0

The Last Stand

Early in The Last Stand, the small-town sheriff played by Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "It's my day off. Should be a quiet weekend." That's the new way of saying, "I've got one week to retirement," because it signals — with flashing neon and everything — that life is going to royally upend those plans.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0

Texas Chainsaw

One of the most inconsistent franchises in movie history is the one beget by Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. How does one follow all those less-than-beloved sequels? Lionsgate's latest in the series — the seventh — has a solution: Ignore 'em.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0
Home · Articles · Movies · Documentary · American Teen
Documentary

American Teen


None August 14th, 2008

americanteen

Reviewer's grade: A

In "American Teen," documentarian Nanette Burstein trains her camera on high school archetypes "” the princess, the rebel, the geek, the jock and the heartthrob "” and digs into the reality behind the stereotype. It sounds like a simple exercise, but Burstein is an exceptional storyteller. Culling through more than 1,000 hours of footage shot over 10 months, she fashions a riveting narrative that remind us how high school was no place for the faint of heart.

And it helps that the teens of "American Teen" possess plenty of heart, particularly Hannah Bailey, a quick-witted 17 year old who dreams of becoming a filmmaker and getting the hell out of her small Indiana town. Some hand-wringing movie critics have accused Burstein's doc of being largely staged because the kids in it seem so unguarded, but those detractors fail to consider that documentary cameras always impact their subjects. Besides, anyone who remembers high school knows that it's nothing but drama. PG-13

"”Phil Bacharach

 
  • Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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