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An unusual, lightly surreal, and unorthodox documentary by Jarred Altermann, Convento takes an unconventional approach that accentuates its subjects, and never exploits them. The short doc (roughly an hour in length) follows the Zwanikken family (mother Geraldine and her sons Christiaan and Louis) as they farm a vacant, 400-year-old monastery in Portugal. They’ve lived there since the … Continue reading
Arguably the best movie about baseball since Robert Redford nailed the stadium lights in The Natural, director Bennett Miller’s Moneyball combines the great American pastime, the unlikely dramedy duo of Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, and analytical statistics into a formula that works improbably well. At its core it is a classic sports underdog story, … Continue reading
Heist movies have become increasingly tired and rote, yet with Drive Danish director Nicholas Winding Refn gets plenty of stylized mileage out of a reinvented wheel. Loosely adapted from James Sallis’ novella by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Hossein Amini, it’s an instant cult classic. Ryan Gosling stars as Driver (like many a movie gunfighter and samurai, his true … Continue reading
Had it been released at a more halcyon time, The Ides of March would likely be dismissed as a self-indulgent political drama. As a cynical movie for an increasingly cynical age, however, its frank look at American politics, especially the double-dealing and backstabbing employed to win an election, couldn’t come at a better time. The movie is … Continue reading
His first movie in since Sideways (2007), writer-director Alexander Payne’s The Descendants (based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings) is also perhaps his best movie to date. That’s saying a lot, considering the rest of his filmography includes Citizen Ruth (1996), Election (1999), and About Schmidt (2002). It’s delicate blend of drama and comedy … Continue reading
Anyone who felt cheated and pandered to after seeing Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-bait movie War Horse or disappointed by the fizzle of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull pay heed: The Adventures of Tintin (his first CG-animated escapade) is quintessential Spielberg, an action-packed ride steeped in old-fashioned swashbuckling adventure that recalls Raiders of … Continue reading
Sucker Punch isn’t just a triumph of style over substance, it also clubs logic into submission and kills subtlety in its sleep. A mash-up of what feels like every 14-year-old geek’s favorite pop culture tropes, it’s a whole lot of noise that adds up to little more than Inception for hormonal 14-year-old boys. The scant story (which … Continue reading
Steeped in fear, paranoia, and dread, Martha Marcy May Marlene is a tidy and compelling psychological thriller by writer-director Sean Durkin that deftly charts one woman’s shattered psyche. It’s one of the best such films since Roman Polanski’s Repulsion or Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake is Missing, but much more accessible. Elizabeth Olsen (younger sister of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen) … Continue reading
The notion of Johnny Depp in another movie based on a novel by Hunter S. Thompson sets a certain level of expectation, thanks to the actor’s memorable turn in Terry Gilliam’s surreal, chaotic 1998 adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Viewers going into Depp and writer-director Bruce Robinson’s version of Thompson’s The Rum Diary will be … Continue reading
Ralph Fiennes makes his directorial debut tomorrow with a daring and unconventional adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. The fine folks at Theater Jones have posted my review of it, which you can read here. – 30 –
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