Forty-nine minutes pass before an act of what passes for conflict occurs. Ironically, doing so further slows a glacial pace. The existential Western Meek’s Cutoff looks like Run Lola Run by comparison. Written and directed by junior filmmaker Julia Loktev, The Loneliest Planet divided critics wildly in its brief theatrical release; viewers can decide on […]
trailer
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Holy Motors
Now that the French film is out on DVD and Blu-ray, it’s the next best thing to the theatrical experience we were denied. Love it or hate it, Holy Motors is nothing if not an experience. Carax regular Denis Lavant (The Lovers on the Bridge) is front and center of this weird, wonderful ride as […]
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Compliance
In a role that should have earned her an Academy Award nomination (but I suspect the old-fart contingent couldn’t make it through the film, if it tried at all), Ann Dowd (Side Effects) gets the role of her long character-actress career as Sandra, manager of a fictional fast-food restaurant. Her shift at ChickWich starts as […]
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The Master
Up for three Academy Awards on Sunday, all for its main performances, the inspired-by-Scientology-but-not-really drama follows Navy vet Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line) as he returns home post-WWII to find he never really had a home to begin with. He doesn’t “fit” anywhere; his string of tenuous relationships — with women, with jobs […]
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Argo
It’s a testament to the skills of the filmmakers that Argo delivers a deluge of suspense even when its ending is never in doubt. Up for seven Oscars on Sunday, it was released earlier this week on Blu-ray and DVD. There’s no way the movie industry could have resisted this stranger-than-fiction yarn. The film chronicles […]
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The Bay
Inspired by an actual event in which fish and birds inexplicably turned up dead in mass quantities, the movie takes place in Claridge, Md., as the Chesapeake Bay celebrates Independence Day in 2009. Much of the footage we see comes courtesy of TV news intern Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue, Pitch Perfect) via a WikiLeaks-esque site, […]
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Brooklyn Castle
The feature debut of director Katie Dellamaggiore, the documentary is now available on demand from FilmBuff. While this institution holds more championship chess titles than any other middle school in the nation (26), the film opens with them experiencing loss — well, second place, at least, among 862 teams. They win so often that not […]
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Sinister
Had I been watching it alone, on a dark and stormy night, my neck likely would be sore by the end of it, from making repeated glances behind the couch — you know, just to be safe. It’s 2012’s Insidious: well-built, respectful of viewers’ intelligence and yet genuinely freaky. Ethan Hawke (Daybreakers) plays Ellison Oswalt, […]
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The Imposter
Nicknamed “The Chameleon” by the press, Bourdin is known for having assumed untold hundreds of identities; Bart Layton’s film wisely chooses to focus on just one of those cases. Luckily, it’s a doozy — one so unbelievable, you wouldn’t believe it without the proof. In 1994, in San Antonio, Texas, a 13-year-old boy named Nicholas […]
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Bath Salt Zombies
Set in New York City, the film imagines such a huge crackdown on “bath salts” — a real-life drug currently making headlines for its zombie-like effects on users — that one enterprising chemist has synthesized it in cigarette form. Smoking it, however, proves even more addictive than usual, causing withdrawal symptoms so bad “it will […]