Whatever happened to Atom Egoyan? Or, more specifically, his artistic credibility? The Canadian filmmaking icon who once strung together a stunning run of acclaimed, focused works in the 90s, including “Exotica,” “The Sweet Hereafter,” and “Felicia’s Journey” has been slumming it of late. Swapping his trademark air of chilly mystery for easily digestible predictability and…
You can say this about Life After Beth, the indie zombie romantic comedy (zom-rom-com?) by first time director, Jeff Baena: Aubrey Plaza (2012’s “Safety Not Guaranteed”) makes for a great zombie. With her deadpan delivery and soulless eyes, she doesn’t have to do much to look and act like the dead reawakened. Don’t get me…
The Last of Robin Hood, which focuses on the twilight of Errol Flynn’s life and career, is an uneven mix of brilliant performances and an inert, aimless story. It’s a shame, really, because Flynn’s final days were the stuff of tabloid legend. Here, the trio of main characters are examined only superficially, with scant attention…
Night Moves, the latest film by Kelly Reichardt (“Meek’s Cutoff”), is a personal story about three young people attempting to impact a society in which they no longer feel a part. Frustrated by continually escalating threats to the environment and by the deafness shown by political leaders, Josh (Jesse Eisenberg, “Now You See Me”) an…
In To Be Takei, the titular George Takei gives his viewers — and plethora of Facebook fans — a good, hard look at his personal day-to-day life, as an Internet sensation, as a renowned voice-over artist, and as a doting husband. The authorized bio-pic is illuminating and wildly entertaining. We all knew George Takei was…
Part live-action and part animation, Israeli director Ari Folman’s The Congress presents a sharp picture of the Hollywood of the future in which flesh and blood actors have been replaced by computer images, scanned to capture them at the most productive point of their career (technology that Folman discovered already exists). Loosely based on Stanislaw…
As Above, So Below is a found-footage tale chronicling a group of young explorers who descend deep into the bone-infested catacombs beneath Paris in search of treasure and historical artifacts. For a found-footage movie, it’s not too bad, with some real heart-stopping moments and genuine shock. It’s a little light on plot, despite the initial…
