At the movies: Crimes of The Future.

 

A new Cronenberg film is a time for rejoicing. I cannot express the joy that this film brings, and I recommend it so very, very highly.

At the movies: Spencer.

 

Kristen Stewart is awesome, and if you feel this is not the case, I'm genuinely amazed that you ended up at this website. Well worth your time...

At the movies: Clouds of Sils Maria.

One of the best films I've seen in ages. So much going on about identity and persona and the escape and prison of the theatre versus film. It gets exponentially better with each subsequent viewing, and it was damn masterful on the first viewing. Do not miss this.

The 2014 New York Film Festival.

Another year, another New York Film Festival... How I love it.

At the movies: Breaking Dawn - Part Two.

Twilight 4.2 happened to me recently. If you'd like my thoughts on the previous films in the series to prepare yourself, you can find them here, here, and here. There's no working link to my New Moon review, so I have reproduced it below for the sake of completism. Regardless, Breaking Dawn Part 2 is kind of amazing. Read along for the goods...

Also, I'd like to point out something that I've noticed about what I've written about the Twilight experience. I've been judgy and a little off-the-cuff with these movies, but I've also had a lot of fun writing about them (even the time I got hit in the face with a New Moon t-shirt from one of those t-shirt guns like what killed Maude Flanders). As far as keeping up a tradition with a franchise I wasn't a huge fan of, these films were way preferable to the Saw movies...

NEW MOON

So free-thinking High School loner Bella and sparkly vampire Edward are together, moping magnificently throughout their Pacific Northwest High School. Then a papercut turns everything upside down, and the Cullens disappear, leaving our girl Bella a depressive adrenaline junkie with a journal full of flowery sadness. Fortunately, lurking in the shadows is another supernatural dreamboat, this time newly-buff werewolf Jacob, who wants to give his all to make sure that Bella is happy and safe.

The only supernatural force, it seems, that isn't devoting itself to protecting Bella: the Volturi. The Volturi are a mysterious clan of vampires who rule from their mini-fortress in Italy. They maintain absolute secrecy as to the existence of their own kind, though they apparently feast on packs of tourists by the busfull. And it's to them Edward has gone, in order to commit a complicated form of ritualized suicide. Because he thinks Bella is dead, and, despite being 109 years old, he's a guy who doesn't really know what it is that he wants.

That old Three's Company paradox of a labyrinthine plot that could be straightened out if people talked directly to one another... Well, New Moon has that by the fistful. And judging by the response of the audience at the pre-opening night screening I attended, New Moon also has puppies and expensive Belgian chocolate and the finest of champagnes, because that's the kind of response it got.

I can't hate: this is certainly more consistent and visually interesting than its predecessor, and its overwrought silliness is infectious, like a Smiths B-side or mononucleisis. Check your brain at the door and enjoy...

At the movies: Breaking Dawn - Part I.

So, this movie you might have heard of opened this weekend.

As you can see above, it's nonstop hot Brazilian honeymoon action. But there are certainly some enjoyably campy facets. Read all about it within...

At the movies: Adventureland.

After his parents’ financial crisis hits right as he’s graduating High School, James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg) has to get a summer job at Adventureland, Pittsburgh’s sketchiest theme park and the . Along the way, he’ll find true love, experience several different kinds of betrayals, and learn why no one can ever truly win a giant stuffed panda at the ring toss game. It’s a sweet and melancholy grand slam for director Greg Mottola, who last made Superbad. That pedigree is promising enough, but that doesn’t get at the real emotional complexity here. Eisenberg, who was absolutely devastating in The Squid and The Whale, carries off the material perfectly, and when you add in Twilight’s Kristen Stewart as the female lead, showing that she can be one of the most dynamic and alive of today’s young actresses, you’ve got a comedy that works like a drama (or vice versa, if you prefer). The little details are spot-on, and it recreates 1987 in a believable and disarming way. Adventureland deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as Fast Times at Ridgemont High or The Last American Virgin; dark and brutal comedies about the hormone-drenched humiliations and pop music-fuelled joys of youth. Nobody always makes the right choice every time, and it’s rewarding to see a film where even the supporting players feel real. If you’ve toiled at a crappy job because you had to, this is a movie for you.