Martin Scorsese. Does any name from the 1970s’ cinema conjure up such a complete and fully-formed picture of his preoccupations as a filmmaker? Urban blight mixed with destructive men who pursue individuality to the point of psychosis, with ephemeral women placed beyond the human as beacons of pure goodness. Add a rock soundtrack and lots […]

So many snarky ways to talk about the disastrous Catch and Release! It is a flawless jewel of wrong – not a single correct choice made anywhere in its overladen 111 minutes. Its ineptitude is unblemished and cannot be measured. It is bottomless, like the Bay of Portugal. In the beginning, there is voice-over. And […]

The auteur-theorist in me wants for the director of a film to always, always be responsible for the final product, and that is what makes The Messengers doubly frustrating: it’s a brilliantly-directed horror movie in which nearly everything that isn’t the direction or cinematography – the acting, the editing, the sound design, the writing and […]

Because I am ultimately far more concerned with entertaining myself than providing edification for you my readers, I thought it might be fun to pursue a bit of a theme with my Sunday reviews for a while. In honor of the impending Academy Awards, I will spend the month of February looking at Oscar-winning films […]

Moviewise, January and February are supposed to be good for only one thing: catching up on all of the overrated prestige epics from the last couple weeks of December. So it’s nothing less than a privilege when a pretty good film gets released into these cinematic hinterlands. Not that Seraphim Falls will be making a […]