Warner Bros. Pictures has released the first tease for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the 2nd installment in the Hobbit film adaptation trilogy. Picking up where “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” left off, the film continues the epic adventure involving the Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, the Dwarf, Thorin Oakenshield and his 12 clansmen and the…
By now those chosen few who’ve sought out Ben Wheatley’s latest, Sightseers (his next film, the English Civil War-set “A Field in England“, opens in UK cineplexes in July), have gotten their fill and hopefully developed an opinion. The film, unleashed upon U.S. audiences in limited release, is one of the darkest I’ve experienced and…
Albert Camus said, “The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.” These words become prophetic in Romanian director Cristian Mungui’s Beyond the Hills, a powerful tale of religious and emotional obsession that leads to tragic consequences. Like…
As a result of their parent’s separation, 12-year-old Koichi (Koki Maeda) lives in Kagoshima with his mother (Nene Ohtsuka) and grandparents (Kirin Kiki and Isao Hashizume) while his younger brother Ryunosuke (Oshiro Maeda) lives with his intermittently employed musician father (Jo Adigiri) in Fukuoka. Both talk to each other daily on their cell phone but…
I’ve been told (and tend to agree) the internet is really good for just one thing: Instantaneous access to pornography. In Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut, Don Jon, the title character suffers from a porn addiction made all the more worse from porn sites like RedTube and xHamster. As a bachelor, it’s not so much a…
If Terrence Malick is the master of the unnecessary voiceover, and Ang Lee is the master of the unnecessary split screen, then surely Baz Luhrmann is the unequaled master of the unnecessary — and over-the-top — mix of garish glitz, flash and explosive cinematechnics. His latest, The Great Gatsby, an ambitious tackling of the 1925…
In this world of commercialistic glitz and glamor, it’s hard to come across a truly riveting story these days. But in Disconnect, viewers get just that, and it happens (surprisingly) to revolve around a social criticism of the crazily convoluted, always plugged-in world we live in. The film begins with a glimpse into the life…
