According to Japanese anime director Makoto Shinkai, his latest film Children who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below is a study of “how people are connected” and the relationship between individuals. Although the film is designed primarily for a young audience, adult themes of love and loss abound in its story of mourning lovers attempting…
North Memphis looks rough. Its houses are collapsing, its public infrastructure is crumbling, and its prospects on the horizon look like its bringing more of the same. Undefeated says life in North Memphis was not always like this, but once the Firestone plant closed and took the jobs away, this part of the city was…
I’m college-aged, enjoy bad movies, and have a foul-mouth, therefore, I am the perfect candidate for Nima Nourizadeh’s Project X. At the same time, I’m potty-trained, and that makes me too sophisticated for it. Loosely based on an Australian house party where a teenager posted his address on MySpace, attracting over 500 people and causing…
Orange is the new green in Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda’s eco-friendly, family flick The Lorax. Based on a Dr. Seuss book of the same name, it’s the latest offering from Illumination Entertainment — the studio behind 2010’s “Despicable Me.” Released on what would been the author’s 108th birthday, the animated feature explores the topic…
You’re probably a lot like me thinking you’d come up with some bat shit crazy ideas if a production company were to come to you and say, “We’ll finance your movie, no matter how outrageous, no questions asked.” Without constraints, maybe you’d throw in a scene involving an older woman jamming anal beads up a…
One of the greatest fears of childhood is being abandoned by your parents and left to face the world alone. In A Brand New Life, winner of Best Asian Film Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival, French director Ounie Lecomte recalls her childhood in South Korea with this sensitively rendered and touching story of…
Christian Bale has used quite a few different voices throughout his career (this is the guy who actually made Batman sound like the complete opposite of alter ego Bruce Wayne), so when he shows up in Zhang Yimou’s Chinese drama The Flowers of War, I sort of half expected Bale to start speaking in Mandarin….
