Archive for April, 2010
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
North Face
Mountain-climber movies are troublesome for any punster to surmount; between the totemic carabiners and dangling ropes, how can one not call them “gripping” or “suspenseful”? After a rocky start—I know, I know—North Face earns its adjectives. The opening is actually less “rocky” than it should be; the film seems about halfway over before its alpinists [...]
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Thursday, April 8th, 2010
Greenberg
In a few years, Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg will likely be regarded as one of the quintessential indie films of its time. It isn’t a startling or groundbreaking work, but it’s a very good addition to an upper-middle-class genre. Aside from being an observant and offbeat character study, and impeccably cast—from a random hook-up on down—it [...]
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Thursday, April 1st, 2010
The White Ribbon
Austere, as rigid as frigid, guilt-ridden, and severe—it’s safe to say that The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner, runs the Nordic track of filmmaking. Set in 1913, in a North German village where blonds are outnumbered only by Lutherans, the movie studies fascism in embryo. Archduke Ferdinand has not yet been killed and [...]