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….
There is a difference between realistic films, such as those made by John Cassavetes, and cinema verité, or films that try to approximate realism. Realistic films know they are fiction, but nonetheless mimic reality for the sake of art, whereas cinema verité attempts to fool viewers into thinking it is real. Matteo Garrone’s 2008, 137…
It still looks like a winner for Disney/Pixar even if the latest trailer for their adventure Brave doesn’t offer up any more information about the movie. In this impressive clip Princess Merida, in Robin Hood fashion, outdoes those competing for her hand in marriage via an archery competition. It’s worth a check as great detail…
Although I got a review out of it (making the experience a humanitarian effort), I take great pride in knowing I’m one of the few men comfortable enough with my masculinity to see a movie like The Vow. If its premise — the “true (at least by Hollywood’s standards) story” of love and the lengths…
Two things I never tire of: Punk rock music and being a father. Therefore, The Other F Word, which combines the two, is the perfect documentary for me. Basically, a bunch of old-timey West Coast punks (Rancid, Blink 182, US Bombs, NOFX, The Vandals and Pennywise, amongst others) talk about what it’s like balancing their…
Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) is uncharitable, misogynistic, nihilistic, a racist, a chain-smoker, a raging alcoholic, and a bad father, but Rampart, the movie he’s thrust into, is astonishingly dull. Helmed by Oren Moverman, it explores the state of the LAPD circa the late ’90s but, despite what its title suggests, the film isn’t about the…
