There is no doubt that superfans of the hugely popular 90’s British rock band Oasis can confidently claim to knowing the intimate details behind one of the most explosive musical acts to come out of working-class Manchester, England. English filmmaker Mat Whitecross’ (“Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll”) revealing and roguish musical documentary Oasis:…
A confusing, convoluted plot, Ron Howard’s uninspired direction and less than stellar acting mar Inferno, the third installment of the popular (at least as far as book sales go) “Da Vinci Code” franchise, but then again, we all know about some of the third-film duds in cinematic history (“Superman 3,” “Rocky 3,” “The Hangover Part…
“What I felt then was a love as pure, as immaterial, as mysterious, as if I had been in the presence of those inanimate creatures which are the beauties of nature” — Marcel Proust, “In Search of Lost Time” The films of Slovenian director Vlado Skafar, director, writer and co-founder of the Slovenian Cinematheque, do…
What a squandered opportunity for director Greg Mottola to churn out a generically noisy suburban spy spoof in the toothless comedy caper Keeping Up with the Joneses. Woefully strained and exhaustive, Mottola’s off-kilter espionage bag of cheap chuckles barely manages to scrape off a scattered selection of smirks here and there. It never takes full…
Historical and even scientific truth can be merely the consensus agreed upon by those who presently have the power and influence to determine public opinion, or it can be based on evidence that has been tested in the laboratory, in debate, or in a court of law. Written by David Hare and based on the…
Occupied village. Crying babies. Mothers many. Babies doze. Japanese colony. Korean village. Woman leaves. Baby stays. Both cry. Off goes. Jap’s house. The opening scene of Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden leaves no room for blinking. That is the secret of its hypnotic pace swimmingly swinging from a contemplative eye which leaves it all to a…
It’s an uncomfortably heavy 13-minute stretch that Konrad Tho Fiedler fills in Running Eagle to tell the brief, though highly evocative tale of a young Native American woman (Devery Jacobs, “Rhymes for Young Ghouls”) struggling to get back home across a frozen wasteland after fleeing a life of forced prostitution. The narrative is split between…
