Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian) (2013 Cannes review)
Easier to respect than embrace, Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian) tells its true-life story with understatement and features sturdy performances from Benicio del Toro and Mathieu Amalric. But this somewhat clinical look at the unlikely therapy sessions that took place between a French anthropologist and a traumatized Native American war veteran in 1947 feels hemmed in by its approach. You sense that French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin wants to avoid the feel-good clichés associated with such a movie, but his alternative is tasteful but also a little too muted.... read more
Stories We Tell
With Stories We Tell, actress-turned-director Sarah Polley has proven herself a consummate filmmaker, transforming an incredible personal story into a playful and profound investigation into the nature of storytelling itself. The central mystery of her documentary—that the man she grew up believing to be her dad is not her biological father—is public knowledge and revealed in the film’s trailer. Yet Polley conceals and reveals information—starting with her relationships to her interview subjects—in such a way as to constantly surprise, even shock, her audience. The result is a film that entertains and delights viewers while elevating her investigation to art.... read more
Dead Man’s Burden
Opening with a serene, lingering shot of the New Mexico desert, Dead Man’s Burden invites us to marvel at this imposing, seemingly uninhabitable landscape. The arresting stillness is then unceremoniously broken as a man on horseback bursts across the screen. A young woman (Clare Bowen) watches him go, tears pooling in her eyes. And the very moment you believe you have the measure of her, she raises a rifle, takes dead aim and fires. Advancing on her wounded quarry—who’s revealed to be her father, Joe—she puts him out of his misery.... read more
He’s Way More Famous Than You
He’s Way More Famous Than You is a self-parodying examination of celebrity and stardom, tracking the lengths a fading indie starlet takes to stake her claim in show business. It blends autobiography, fiction and farce with a number of actors playing themselves and other characters simultaneously.... read more
Like Father, Like Son (2013 Cannes review)
Like Father, Like Son, the latest bittersweet drama from Japanese writer-director Kore-eda Hirokazu, may be utterly conventional in some ways, but its surging emotional power eventually proves too overwhelming to deny. We probably don’t need another film about a workaholic father who learns to stop and smell the roses, but when it’s handled as effortlessly as Kore-eda does here, you remember that storytelling conventions exist for a reason: In the right hands, they can still work wonderfully.... read more
Young & Beautiful (2013 Cannes review)
When we first meet Isabelle (Marine Vacth), she doesn’t seem much different than most 16-year-olds. Yes, she’s strikingly beautiful in a bikini, but the adolescent uncertainty and hormonal urges are quite recognizable and universal. Once this French girl loses her virginity to an older German guy, however, her behavior changes in ways that neither we nor anyone close to her could have imagined.... read more
The Past (2013 Cannes review)
One of the constant challenges for screenwriters is trying to condense the complexity of human beings into an accessible feature-length presentation. In real life, it can take months—maybe years, maybe never—to fully understand another person. (And that’s if we’re lucky enough to even figure out ourselves.) Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi is restrained by the same obstacles that other filmmakers are, but somehow he seems capable of developing incredibly complex and nuanced characters. They’re layers upon layers, contradictory and mysterious, still revealing things about themselves even once we think we have a bead on them.... read more
The Bling Ring (2013 Cannes review)
When making a film based on actual crimes, there’s a natural inclination to want to explain precisely what drove the perpetrators to commit their deeds. But in the case of The Bling Ring, a movie inspired by a few high school kids’ string of robberies at celebrities’ homes in the late 2000s, writer-director Sofia Coppola’s rationale for their crimes is quite simple: They did it because they were extraordinarily shallow and materialistic. It’s an intriguing notion, but one wishes Coppola wouldn’t pound on this single point for her movie’s entire running time.... read more
The Congress (2013 Cannes review)
The ambition of The Congress is such that it almost makes a convincing argument for filmmakers following their mad visions wherever they take them, even if they haven’t worked out crucial specifics like story and character. Moving from the personal and experimental nature of his last film, the documentary Waltz With Bashir, director Ari Folman has again gone bold. Even when The Congress falters, which is far, far too often, the conviction of his approach keeps convincing you that he’ll pull things together shortly. Too bad that never quite happens.... read more
Heli (2013 Cannes review)
The world of Heli is a dark and desperate one. Set in an impoverished isolated Mexican community, director Amat Escalante’s spare, unflinching drama treats crime and violence as regrettably commonplace occurrences. From Heli’s perspective, it’s not surprising that lawlessness exists in that country’s remote regions—but it is somewhat miraculous that it has yet to visit the film’s main characters. Until now.... read more
Pieta
From the moment he strides on-screen in Kim Ki-duk’s Pieta, it’s clear that Kang-do (Lee Jung-jin) is a nasty piece of business who’s found both a calling and environ ideally suited to his violent tendencies.... read more
Star Trek Into Darkness
For Trekkies, Abrams’ film is part two of an extended, mostly pleasurable exercise in alternate reality resonance—it’s like film fan fiction, minus the slash-fic component. read more
The Great Gatsby
It may be impossible for The Great Gatsby to make it to the screen and still be The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is such a slippery endeavor, such a combination of dueling character perceptions and unseen incidents, that by the time a filmmaker materializes it, some of its power unavoidably vanishes. Of course, you lose some things and gain others any time you adapt one medium to another, but Gatsby is about a deep, hollow longing lurking behind glitz and glamor. When you put it on the screen, it’s easier to show the frills than the subtle notes... read more
Something in the Air
Back in the chaotic times of the late ’60s and ’70s, student riots erupted throughout Paris, not unlike college campuses in America. Young idealists screaming for parity banded together to fight the government, angry cops and even angrier parents. For a pack of young communist comrades, school was over; it was time to start a revolution.... read more
The Iceman
Ariel Vromen’s The Iceman is inspired by real events in the life of Richard Kuklinski, a hitman convicted in 1988 for killing 100 men in the New York area during a 20-year period. While shocking, the murders are not the most surprising part of the story. Kuklinski perfected the art of compartmentalizing: His double life was so meticulously hidden that his wife and daughters had no idea about his real profession until his arrest.... read more
The Source
We are nation obsessed with pop culture. The Internet has become the great equalizer; there are websites, forums and groups devoted to every imaginable interest, philosophy and lifestyle. The term “counterculture” is charmingly obsolete. We are the assimilators and the assimilated. In America’s pre-connected recent history—the 1960s and 1970s—this was not the case. Young people by the tens of thousands took Timothy Leary’s admonition to heart: tune in, turn on, drop out. Hundreds of social experiments in communal living cropped up along the California coast. Some terrified us (think Manson Family), some mystified us (think Krishna Consciousness), and some exploited... read more
Love Is All You Need
After directing a series of intense dramas, including the Oscar-winning In a Better World, Susanne Bier turns her lens on a romantic comedy. While the setting (an Italian villa!), situation (a family wedding!) and soundtrack (“That’s Amore”!) of the blandly titled Love Is All You Need are clichéd staples of the genre, the Danish helmer and her frequent writing partner Anders Thomas Jensen bring both gravity and a light touch to an otherwise familiar narrative.... read more
Kiss Of the Damned
Vampires have always been associated with sex. From the sexual awakening of Lucy and Mina in Bram Stocker’s Dracula, to the homoeroticism in Interview with a Vampire, the genre has, in many ways, been more about the exploration of human desire than it has been about blood-sucking.... read more
Iron Man 3
Though Iron Man 3 is a better constructed film than its predecessor, ultimately it succeeds for the same reason the first two films did—Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark. read more
Post Tenebras Lux
Fading Away Only a dream Just a memory Without anywhere to stay -Neil Young Carlos Reygadas’ fourth film, Post Tenebras Lux begins with what, in retrospect, appear to be two dreams. They both become nightmares.... read more
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