For what is supposedly his final film, anime master Hayao Miyazaki ambitiously departs from his usual genre territory and yet still honors his innermost passions while once again expressing wonder through the imaginative eyes of its protagonist. The Wind Rises stands out in Miyazaki’s filmography because not only is it anchored in reality when nearly…
If you were to travel back to the nondescript year of 2004 in your time machine (hopefully of the hot tub variety) and tune into one of those crappy upstart TV stations (the CW in this case) you’d find a little show about a girl detective who, while solving campy mysteries, also has to deal…
Omar (Adam Bakri), a young baker living in the West Bank, has to climb a wall just to see his girlfriend Nadia (Leem Lubany), a high school student. It is not a wall that separates Israeli and Palestinian territory but one within the West Bank itself, dividing Palestinians from each other. Living in what amounts…
For eight years, fans of “300” have been wondering how the film would be followed up — could the heroic sacrifice of King Leonidas and his brave 300 Spartans be outdone? With his sophomore effort, Noam Murro (“Smart People”) says, “yeah, kinda,” with his fairly praisable sequel 300: Rise of an Empire. Keeping with the…
It isn’t likely one will recognize any members of the cast of Cement Suitcase, a film written and directed by J. Rick Castaneda (whose resume includes just a few short features, including “Math and Other Problems”). Yes, a person may have a fleeting bit of acknowledgement, but will most likely say, “Oh, he/she just looks…
The gruff male character is sitting in his car on his own, drinking alcohol, looking at a picture of his young daughter, because this shows that he’s haunted by personal tragedies. If that wasn’t enough, he suspiciously regards the people around him as he walks through the airport. Just in case this makes him too…
Paul W.S. Anderson might just be the very avatar of filmmaking mediocrity. Starting with the legendarily bad “Mortal Kombat” adaptation and working his way up a bit from there, he’s made a living off churning out genre films not awful enough to be memorable, but just bad in enough noticeable, glaring ways to make for…
