Cinema Mishmash

My favorite film from the 2009 Chicago International Film Festival, Bong Joon-Ho’s Mother, doesn’t so much defy classification as much as it conglomerates genres in a way that seems as unusual as it is natural. Those who have seen Bong’s 2006 sea monster romp, The Host, will sense an immediate familiarity with Bong’s blending of [...]

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The prologue to Antichrist, Lars von Trier’s latest cinematic provocation, is among the most moving, sumptuous, beautiful imagery ever set to a score and projected for an audience. Washed in a blue monochrome, the slow-motion sequence both takes your breath away and paralyzes you. It is so beautiful, in fact, that it nearly anesthetizes you [...]

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Aside from being a kind and gracious soul (as displayed again at his appearance tonight at the film’s North American debut at the Chicago International Film Festival), John Woo is a talented filmmaker. He is well known for the visual flourish he brings to action sequences, which is tirelessly put to use is Red Cliff, [...]

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I’m just going to come out and say it: there isn’t enough going on in Scoop to justify it’s existence to anyone but die hard Woody Allen completists. Admittedly I have a love/hate reaction to Allen’s work. There is no doubt that he is a supremely gifted filmmaker, but Scoop is another example of his [...]

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Battle in Heaven is my introduction to Mexican Director Carlos Reygadas. Over the last several years, I have had an unseen copy of his feature directorial debut, Japon (2002), both on VHS tape from cable (since discarded) and on a DVR recording (on two different systems that have since been replaced). After experiencing Battle in [...]

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Only Ingmar Bergman could make a film chronicling the entirety of a couple’s relationship, one marked by only moments of sunlight breaking through the dark clouds of unmitigated angst, ambition, and sarcasm, and get away with calling it To Joy. The title holds secondary meaning, though, since both the singularly self-obsessed and self-destructive central character, [...]

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If the societal revenge flick genre didn’t exist before, it does now with Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, a multi-threaded re-imagining in which Hitler and the Nazis get what’s coming a lot sooner than historical truth and, as one would expect from the reining cineaste auteur, with a visual and narrative flourish that no one could [...]

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Breaking and Entering, the last film by director Anthony Minghella before his tragic early death, has so much going for it on its surface that it’s true value — the ideas that lie underneath — almost go undetected. That just might be the definition for the ideal of entertainment cinema. The surface here is adorned [...]

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I have revisited Luis Buñuel’s final cinematic work, That Obscure Object of Desire, in all of its puzzling and captivating glory, with a plan towards it being the centerpiece of discussion at an upcoming “dinner and a movie” night among friends – two of whom have recently designed a beautiful poster inspired by the film’s central [...]

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One of the biggest assets that Woody Allen has as a director is his ability to assemble a tremendous array of talent for his pictures. Just about any actor seems to jump at the chance to be able to say he or she was in a Woody Allen picture, and as a result, some of [...]

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For any artist, the ideal must be the ability to choose any project and have the resources to pursue it, without compromise and, if desired, without collaboration. For the consumer, if you will, the ideal is an artist with that type of freedom who has the talent and daring to not waste the opportunity. In [...]

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I’ve never been a huge sports fan, but imagine that if your favorite player, at the crucial point in the game, missed the free throw or strikes out, the pain is felt a little more strongly when you know that a great talent didn’t live up to your very personal expectations. That’s how I feel [...]

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Writer/director John Sayles is a good storyteller. Having authored or contributed to nearly 35 screenplays (including some Hollywood doozies, like Piranha, credited as his first) and directed 16 features, it would be fair to call him a prolific one as well. And while his personal projects as writer/director aren’t all brilliant, they are all well constructed, satisfying [...]

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Set in Paris during the Nazi occupation, François Truffaut’s The Last Metro tells the story of a the perseverance of a theater owner and her thespian troupe despite the increasing personal and artistic challenges faced by each member. At the center is Marion Steiner (Catherine Deneuve) an actress who has assumed management of her Jewish husband’s (Heinz [...]

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W. is a strange little film. Throughout the first 15 minutes of the film, I was looking for clues as to the tone that Oliver Stone was trying to achieve, and am still confused as to where on the line between parody and earnest biopic the experience of this story is meant to reside. The opening cabinet [...]

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