Thursday, January 14th, 2010
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
I slipped into a 6:40 show of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus at 6:50, hoping to have only missed some previews; instead, I apparently missed out on half the plot. Unless the director, Terry Gilliam, has devised a newfangled approach to storytelling that condenses an hour or more of exposition into a five-minute intro, I […]
1 Comment » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Thursday, December 24th, 2009
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Some people have the worst luck. Others are invented to have the worst luck. Such is the genesis of the title character in Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. From that title alone, you know how importantly bad her luck is; the title needs a colonic. Produced under the aegis of Oprah Winfrey […]
2 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
An Education
In the past few weeks, I’ve reviewed four movies set in the 1960s. (One can see the autobiographical filmmakers’ distress: Starting January 1st, it’ll be accurate to say that the ’60s were a whopping 50 years in the past. Perhaps we’re experiencing a collective baby-boomer mid-century crisis.) The best of the lot is An Education, […]
4 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Thursday, August 27th, 2009
Inglourious Basterds
Quinten Tarentino’s Inglourious Basterds is about as accurate to Second World War history as Kill Bill was to the present day, and while watching the movie I bought the conceit because this is Tarantino territory, and I was entertained. But, in retrospect, his revisionist history is offensive not only because it’s dreadfully arrogant of Tarantino […]
6 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
The Class
Taking into account its extremely confined setting, The Class is one of the most comprehensive movies I’ve seen. Nearly all of the film—which won the 2008 Palme d’Or at Cannes—is set within a secondary school in a Paris banlieue, and a majority of our time there is devoted to the French class instructed by M. […]