Well, it left this fan with an unpleasant aftertaste. At first, I was uncertain who the doc was for. While it certainly is accessible enough for the uninitiated, those people aren’t likely to run across it or even be interested if they do. And since I didn’t learn anything from it, the already converted aren’t […]
torren
Posted inArts & Culture
Thale
Presumably in her 20s, their find, Thale (Silje Reinåmo), is actually a “huldra.” In Scandinavian folklore, that’s a seductive forest creature. Her pointy tail is the dead giveaway, but the guys learn more about her from tape recordings that sound like something out of The Evil Dead. From writer/director Aleksander Nordaas, the Norwegian Thale certainly […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Hope Springs
Not without extreme difficulty, she somehow persuades Arnold to visit a marriage counselor (a misused Steve Carell, Crazy, Stupid, Love.) in another town for a week of intensive therapy — good for their relationship, bad for the viewer, for whom it feels like sitting in sessions in real time. At nights, in their room at […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Killer Joe
The second collaboration between director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) and Tulsa-born playwright Tracy Letts — their first being 2006’s Bug — this work serves up trailer-trash noir as savage as it is savagely funny. Not that all audiences will get the joke. Letts’ first play rolls around in the muck, and Friedkin […]
Posted inMusic
Sugar sugar
Few things can be more terrifying than an out-of-control mob at a rock concert — especially when that mob hasn’t had a nap. Chris Wiser of kiddie-rock duo the Sugar Free Allstars nearly shudders at the memory of one such show, when he and his fellow Allstar, Rob Martin, faced a crowd of unruly children […]