Like so many sequels, especially of comedy films, a serious drought of what made the first funny and charming takes place in Ted 2, forcing writers to substitute true laughs with obscenities (saying the “F” word over and over does not make it any more clever), crude jokes and, in this case, far too many…
The found footage approach to low-budget filmmaking has been around long enough to be used in all sorts of fun and clever ways, each attempt toeing the line between committing to the gimmick and admitting it. We’ve witnessed ghostly activity on home surveillance equipment (“Paranormal Activity”) and a giant monster trashing New York on a…
How hard it is to look at pure evil right in the eye? It is hard, very hard, mainly because, as Hannah Arendt very lucidly said, it is extremely banal. No apocalyptic Lucifer-like layouts, no tall teleologies or immense intentions; the people who do evil are brutally banal, practically plain — and they are of…
Movies can’t always be cut and dry. It’s often easy to walk away from a film and declare whether or not you liked it or whether or not it was effective, but every now and then, there’s a project that cannot be so easily labeled. For better or worse, this is the case with Like…
Is it any wonder that our current democratic systems have turned into popularity contests? Is it any wonder that most Western politicians primarily rely on intricate advertising schemes to continuously validate themselves? For those whose eyes still blink in bewilderment at what the political landscape looks like today, Gabe Polsky’s Red Army gives us an…
Not since 2009’s “Up” has Pixar Animation Studios/Walt Disney Pictures fashioned a clever, emotional, family-friendly film that could be embraced by children and adults alike; one that has not only a heart and brain, but a conscience, as well. After commercially-successful and Oscar-winning — but bland and unfulfilling — features such as “Brave” and “Big…
Nightmarish visions abound in Romain Basset’s horror mystery Horsehead and the narrative elements are so tightly focused here that the picture’s success relies almost entirely on the effectiveness of those visions. Basset makes the bold move to let the visions swallow the story so that the movie threatens to topple off the edge of reality…
