Like last year’s “The 33,” which told of the survival and rescue of a group of Chileans trapped in a gold mine in 2010, Lionsgate’s Deepwater Horizon, produced by and starring Mark Wahlberg (“Ted 2”), along with John Malkovich, Kurt Russell and Kate Hudson, relates the horrifying experience of another true life disaster culled from…
While The Unknown Girl, the latest film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (“Two Days, One Night”), is suggestive of social and political issues such as immigration, unemployment, and economic imbalance, its main concern is with moral character, accountability, and spiritual redemption. Like many other films of the Dardenne Brothers, it is simple, natural, and direct,…
It’s difficult to make a comedy these days without it devolving into either juvenile slapstick buffoonery or an ignorant vulgarity-laden vehicle for the nation’s lowest common denominators. It’s especially hard when such a film’s protagonist is so completely devoid of intelligence or even common sense as to be totally unrelatable and unsympathetic throughout. Oh, and…
It’s pitch dark. We see nothing. Only hear hollow voices as routine questions are asked and forms are filled. No context whatsoever. Yet we slowly and silently find ourselves rooting for the individual answering the increasingly absurd questionnaire. That’s when we find ourselves rooted in the character that will be leading the whole film. That’s…
The cinema of Kosovo, or indeed Eastern Europe in general, does not receive much attention from Western viewers. This is due to the difficulties of production, distribution and exhibition, all of which are daunting for a filmmaker in any part of the world. It is therefore heartening when a film from this under-represented area does…
Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven is set in a world where even having a drink requires vigilance. The film opens with Bartholomew Bogue’s (Peter Sarsgaard, “Black Mass”) hostile takeover of Rose Creek, a small mining community. This results in the deaths of countless settlers — most notably Matthew Cullen (Matt Bomer, “The Nice Guys”), whose…
Comedy is big business. It can also be a very lucrative business. Many aspiring comics from all walks of life have sacrificed to make it their personal goal to become professional laugh-makers. The world is at their jocular fingertips if and when that elusive break comes down the opportunistic pike. One can imagine the humble…
