The Mafia penetrates American life so deeply and fully that the organization provides the subject for both gangster films and comedies (mobedies?). Although the mob’s traditional business enterprises — robbery, drugs, prostitution, gambling, extortion, political corruption, etc., etc., usually accompanied by violence and bloodshed — hardly qualify as material for laughs, some writers and filmmakers […]
Film review
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“Austenland”
Be it in novels, on television, or in the movies, love stories in popular culture have always had the (perhaps unintended) effect of creating unrealistic expectations of what romance should be. It’s this tendency that makes the genre so ripe for a good satirical takedown every now and again. Deflating these idealized notions of love […]
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“In a World…”
The curious title of “In a World…” comes from a repeated phrase, the opening words of the voiceover introduction of a series of amazon-warrior films, which the characters refer to as a “quadrilogy.” In a sense the whole movie revolves around those words, which come to accumulate more meanings as the story progresses through a […]
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“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”
There are some films (and filmmakers, for that matter) that wear their influences on their sleeves, unabashedly declaring to which cinematic predecessors its creators are most indebted. There’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but the catch is that the director should bring enough of his or her original voice to the material […]
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“Closed Circuit”
The recent revelations about the long history of the American government spying on its citizens through a variety of sophisticated methods make the appearance of the British film “Closed Circuit” especially relevant. Public knowledge and even tolerance of the myriad surveillance devices that observe and report on the actions of millions of people create an […]
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“The World’s End”
There will always be an England, at least as long as there’s a PBS, and as long as the Brits continue to mine one of their greatest natural resources, eccentricity. Trust an English filmmaker to spin some contemporary popular genres in a different direction, as Edgar Wright did a few years ago in “Shaun of […]
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Woody Allen’s annual picture
Although he dutifully releases something like a film a year, and despite the reflexive gushing of the reviewers, Woody Allen has actually not produced a genuinely good movie in years, perhaps even decades. A good deal of his work ranges from abysmal — “Alice,” “Mighty Aphrodite,” “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion” — to the […]
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Guess who’s coming to dinner?
There are certain movies that simply demand to be seen with an audience. Comedy and horror films typically benefit the most from a group setting; being able to sit in the dark, screaming, shrieking, and/or laughing your head off alongside a group of perfect strangers undeniably increases one’s enjoyment of a film (it’s for this […]
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REVIEW: “The Spectacular Now”
Just one month ago, in this very space, I was marveling at the number of teenage boy coming-of-age movies that have been released in theaters recently. It looks as though I spoke too soon, because here comes one more. Luckily, James Ponsoldt’s “The Spectacular Now” differentiates itself from the others, offering a subtle, bittersweet take […]
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‘Elysium’
After the success of his highly unusual 2009 science-fiction film, “District 9,” Neill Blomkamp now moves into the big time, Hollywood version, with another excursion into the genre, “Elysium.” Instead of a cast of relatively unknown players, the director this time benefits from the luster and the talents of a couple of big stars — […]
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‘The Act of Killing’
Straddling the line between documentary and narrative, exploitation and exposé, the haunting “The Act of Killing” sees filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer ask the leaders of the notorious Indonesian death squads, responsible for the mass murder of more than 1 million civilians in 1965-66, to recount their most brutal crimes, then allow them the opportunity to re-enact […]
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“I’m So Excited”
With a hard-earned reputation for flirting with outrageous and comical interpretations of sex, the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar demonstrates in his new movie, “I’m So Excited,” that the outrageousness and the comedy, without wit and invention, cannot sustain an entire film. A late work in a reasonably prolific and quite successful career, the picture seems […]
