The pale, otherworldly beauty and charisma of Brit Marling give this wispy oddity a center, almost a soul. She is a mysterious cult leader “from the future,” with a secret agenda. Two amateur filmmakers want to expose her as a fraud, but they feel her power. Zal Batmanglij’s direction imposes …
Like something from the pages of Gourmet magazine or, better still, the Food Channel (where it rightfully belongs), the good-natured Spinning Plates is lovely to look at. In other words, first-time director Joseph Levy was smart enough to hire a competent director of photography - in this case, Erin Harvey …
For 28 years, two loyal friends serve a concurrent prison sentence: Val (Al Pacino), behind bars for refusing to finger an associate, and Doc (Christopher Walken), on the outside, waiting to perform the hit when his old partner is released. You might think there isn’t much to this gangsters-get-old fable …
Pretty young Jane (an endlessly appealing Dree Hemingway) wakes up one morning, surveys the sun-washed anonymity of her rented room in the Valley, and decides to do something about it. She goes garage-saling for some personal touches, and winds up buying a thermos from cranky widow Sadie (Besedka Johnson). Surprise! …
A welcome development: big-screen luminaries (Judi Dench, Colin Firth, Kenneth Branagh, Keira Knightley, Tom Hiddleston, et. al.) lending their luster to the short-film form. At their best, short films function like short stories, trimming away every excess to deliver aesthetic completion in a fraction of the time. It's a difficult …
It is actually impossible to improve upon this studio summary: “Emily arrives in Miami with aspirations to become a professional dancer. She sparks with Sean, the leader of a dance crew whose neighborhood is threatened by Emily’s father’s development plans.” The leader of a dance crew!
With its focus on a renowned European restaurant and its structure built around the four seasons, Entre les Bras (punnily rendered as Step Up to the Plate for us English-speakers) will naturally call to mind 2011’s superfoodie documentary El Bulli: Cooking in Progress. But the films have inverse emphases: El …
Gorgeously shot story of Craig Morrison (a masterful James Cromwell), a New Brunswick old-timer who sets out to build a one-story house on his property for his wife Irene (Genevieve Bujold). She is beginning to suffer from dementia, and their two-story farmhouse is becoming too much for her. He knows …
Two pirate pictures set to open within a month of each other and neither star Johnny Depp?! Thymaya Payne’s Stolen Seas documents the current trend of Somali freebooters taking control of Danish merchant ships and ransoming off their crews. Declining the aid of an intermediary, shipping magnate Per Gullestrup negotiates …
Writer-director Sarah Polley turns the camera on herself and her family, revealing along the way that she was born as the result of an extramarital affair.
Positioned on the border of Pakistan and China, K2 is the second highest point on earth after Mount Everest. In August 2008, eighteen mountain climbers scaled the heights of K2, but only 7 survived the descent. Being touted for its “breathtaking cinematography and jaw-dropping reenactments,” with nature supplying one “face …
Tired of movies that are either based on or feel like video games? Then how about a movie that actually incorporates multiple video-game motifs, from life-levels to motion indicators to pop-up data points? Not in the cutesy, self-conscious, Scott Pilgrim way, but naturally, as if such things were part and …
A window fan blows the heat out of a sweltering Toronto kitchen as Michelle Williams kneels on the floor, her cheek pressed against the glowing oven door, her heart burning with desire. Happily married doesn't always mean happily ever after, and the tension between the two sets the tone for …