Ever wondered what the difficulties iconic director Alfred Hitchcock had to endure to make his masterpiece “Psycho?” Well wonder no more as Hitchcock, based off of the novel, “Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho” by Stephen Rebello, lays them out for you. Whether, they’re enough to tantalize for an hour or two is another…
The Oranges borrowed the underlying suburban malaise of “American Beauty” and remolded it into a comedy. West Orange, New Jersey resembles the 2000 Best Picture winner but the atmosphere is different. The characters still make horrible choices which impact their immediate families and friends, but the looming dread and depression are replaced by a lighter…
Robert Miller (Richard Gere) is guilty of multiple felonies including involuntary manslaughter and investment fraud, but he is not really an evil man. In fact, the audience is on his side in Arbitrage; you want him to win and get away with it all. You feel this way not because you’re callous and root for…
According to English Professor Jack Lynch, “Lies, once they are accepted as true, take on a life of their own, one that lasts long after the original falsehoods have been exposed.” The power of the continued acceptance of lies is reflected in Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt, a disturbing story of the false accusation of a…
In 1968 in Paris, France, the something in the air was revolution. In March of that year, a single spark began a revolt when a small group of students at Nanterre University took to the streets to protest conditions at the University. By July, workers had shut down Paris with a general strike in which…
Sounds punctuate the neighborhood in Kleber Filho’s exhilarating Neighboring Sounds (Brazilian title, O som ao redor): A dog barks incessantly, street vendors blast their stereos, the noise of TVs reverberate through the streets, a vacuum cleaner rumbles, a washing machine vibrates, and a car sideswipes another. Neighboring Sounds employs a wealth of cinematography and sound…
In 2008 audiences were wowed by ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills’ (Liam Neeson) skills in “Taken” as he put them to good use rescuing his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) who had been snatched whilst on a holiday in Paris by Albanian gangsters. In Taken 2 it’s now a year or so on and Mills is called…
