The primary creative force behind Lady Magdalene’s, J. Neil Schulman, may be somewhat of a successful novelist, but he cannot in good conscience add filmmaking to his list of credentials. While Schulman wants you to believe that Lady Magdalene’s is a smart action-comedy satirizing today’s post-9/11 climate, the resulting picture is actually an agonizing catastrophe;…
Relaxing at night, after a hard day at work and a few hours online, tending to emails, website modifications, correspondence, and creative things, amongst the best things to do, if too tired to read a book, is to watch a film. But, not a fictive film, but a documentary where, even if the film is…
When viewing the primal landscape of the beautiful country of Rwanda, it is hard to imagine that only a short time ago the land was awash with the blood of 800,000 people. No film more fully captures the residual pain resulting from the 1994 genocide than Munyurangabo, an intimate and deeply moving first feature from…
Loosely based on director Mike Mills’ own experience as the son of a gay father who came out in his seventies, Beginners is the story of sexual and emotional repression, thwarted relationships, and fresh starts. Hal (Christopher Plummer), at age 75, tells his 38-year-old son Oliver (Ewan McGregor), that he is gay and has been…
Making a genuinely good, original Christmas movie is a difficult task in this day and age. Added to this, after Fred Claus, The Polar Express, The Santa Clause and other such motion pictures, it seems impossible to put another fresh spin on Santa Claus and his North Pole universe. Enter the British animation studio Aardman,…
The vast majority of film characters who are addicted to pills and alcohol should not be the main characters in movie scripts. These characters are frequently one dimensional and are only required to slur words, stumble over steps, and make a nuisance of themselves. There are exceptions (Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas) as there…
There is a point to Julia Leigh’s debut film Sleeping Beauty. There has to be. It can’t be just an arthousey endeavor or a vehicle for Emily Browning to completely expose herself in. Or can it? Whatever it is, Leigh takes the viewer on a cold and calculating, slow ride into the worlds of a…
