With found footage movies on life support, writer and director David Ayer hopes to reanimate the genre with his first-person buddy cop action film, End of Watch. Having written Training Day, Mr. Ayer certainly had the street credentials for the job, but his flashy and ornate homage to the television show Cops, the original forbearer […]
If you’re going to see Nicholas Jarecki’s high finance thriller, Arbitrage, make sure to bring an Economics major with you. For one, he or she could tell you what ‘arbitrage’ means and how it applies to the film, and, for two, they can help you follow the serpentine and occasionally muddled script. Unlike 2011’s Margin […]
TORONTO – On July 24th, Piers Handling, CEO and Director of TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival), and Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director, unveiled some of the films that will headline the 37th Toronto International Film Festival. According to Bailey, TIFF 2012 will include the “most diverse Gala programme to date with films from Japan, China, […]
In the classified ads section of a local newspaper reads one that says, “Wanted; someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. Safety not guaranteed.” Odd as this might sound, this is […]
While American politicians abjectly deride the Scandinavians for being ‘pinko commies’, Hollywood has been taking notice of their considerable cinematic talent, finding every opportunity to import some of their best films for American remakes. David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Matt Reeves’ Let Me In are excellent examples, but no Scandinavian film […]
It’s the Western Conference Quarterfinals. Game one. Nashville leads Detroit 3-2. There’s 5 seconds left in the third. Gaustad and Datsyuk skate to the faceoff circle. The ref drops the puck. Gaustad wins the draw. The puck flies to the corner. The Red Wings jump after it. A scrum ensues. Zetterberg tries to get around […]
Picture this. There’s a group of college kids. They are attractive. One of them has a relative that owns a cottage. It’s in the middle of nowhere. They all hop into an RV. There’s no cellphone reception. Or GPS. They get lost. They pull up to a dingy, suspicious looking gas station. Out comes the […]
Writer-director Mary Harron has proven herself as an accomplished auteur in the realm of the psychological thriller. Having written and directed the cult hit, American Psycho, Harron has proven that she’s able to simultaneously challenge you intellectually, while making your heart skip a beat. So it’s more the disappointing that her latest foray into the […]
Remember the first 30 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the primates encounter the black monolith and begin taking on human attributes and advanced levels of cognitive capability? Well, expand that episode to an hour and thirty minutes, and the result is the BBC Earth documentary, One Life. Inconspicuously narrated by Daniel Craig, One […]
Here’s a well-known traditional Japanese proverb: “the world sucks”. Filled with deception, greed, and amoral opportunism, honesty and trust have become nothing more than archaic misnomers and fantastical abstractions for naïve dreamers and gullible idealists. As such, there are people out there who see life as nothing more than a game, and when that game […]