Personally, I went in to The Thompsons relatively cold, having heard of its big brother, but never having caught up with it. In doing so, I felt like I had jumped onto a sitcom in its second or third week: I could immediately get into its groove without knowing the backgrounds of the players. All […]
trailer
Posted inArts & Culture
Searching for Sugar Man
Take, for example, Searching for Sugar Man. Currently up for the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award and new to DVD, the doc introduces us to the saga of the one-named Rodriguez, a criminally unknown singer-songwriter from the early 1970s whose career sank into obscurity in his native United States, but whose influence proved monumental in, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bolo
Bolo is a punch used by boxers — a wide, sweeping uppercut. It also is the title of Fall Films’ latest local production. We recommend skipping the former and taking the latter. With free beer from Titswiggle Brewing Co. and live music beforehand from local harpist Jessica Tate, Bolo premieres Saturday at City Arts Center. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Tai Chi Zero
In an acting debut that deliberately doesn’t require him to act much, wushu champ Yuan Xiaochao plays Lu Chan, nicknamed “The Freak” from birth because a horn-like protrusion on the side of his forehead. When pushed, his eyes go milky and, for a brief time, he hulks out with brute force until blood spurts out […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
The film fills in the details of Holmes’ three-year spell of assumed death — “Only the facts have been made up,” teases a title card — by pairing the great detective with the great psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. Arguably more notable is that Solution is the first dilated-pupils depiction of Holmes, the only to tackle head-on […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Suddenly
Especially for generations who were introduced to Ol’ Blue Eyes via Cannonball Run II, it’s easy to forget Sinatra could act, and in Suddenly, he does that quite well as John Baron, an assassin for hire who takes over a nice family’s home in the small town of the title in order to whack the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Game Change
If Sen. McCain’s choice of the largely unknown Alaska Gov. Palin as his veep choice seemed out of nowhere then, there’s good reason: Because it pretty much was. McCain, here played by Ed Harris (Man on a Ledge), wanted Sen. Joe Lieberman, but was talked into someone “more transformative” by hired gun Steven Schmidt (Woody […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Premium Rush
Please note that doesn’t mean it’s the best of the lot — it’s just that its zippy pleasures arrive with no strings, messages or ulterior motives attached. This is a well-made action film, albeit a disposable one — no more, no less. In what may be the only film centered on the world of bike […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Mad Magician
Just as he’s about to hit the big time with his super-secret buzz-saw trick, however, his show gets axed and his boss claims proprietary rights to all of Gallico’s stage tools. As all mad magicians as wont to do, Gallico snaps and kills the guy by — and this fits the theme — decapitation via […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Wuthering Heights
Costume dramas are not my thing. That goes double when they’re staged with an epic sweep — true tests of patience and bladder resolve. So there’s something admirable about directors tackling oft-adapted material with a decidedly different approach, which could account for two such pictures making many a critic’s 2012 best list: Joe Wright’s Anna […]