This one doesn’t need a lot of interpretation. It is exactly what you expect: a well executed action thriller that hits every button a Hollywood movie with pretensions to semi-seriousness has to hit. We have: lots of children, often conducting themselves bravely after the loss of a parent; plenty of bonding across religious and national lines; expert American investigators able to solve crimes with just a few fibers and access to the Internet; the requisite cowardly top American officials, more interested in politics than solving crimes and saving lives. (more…)

i just saw california split and the conversation and i have decided that the 70s might be my favorite decade. i ask the members of this group: what are your ten favorite 70s films? and, if you feel inclined, what are the defining features of 70s cinema? (i suppose we can start with america, and maybe sprinkle in some france, but no italy please i don’t do italian cinema only italian soccer).

A short film–linked by one character, and I hear a prequel(ish) to the upcoming Darjeeling Limited–is available for free at iTunes, for a short time. I grabbed it, but wanted to let people know if they wanted to see it….

Two quick reactions, one very effusive.

A couple weeks ago I saw Away From Her, the directoral debut of Sarah Polley, adapting a short story by Alice Munro about a woman drifting into Alzheimer’s, grappling with the loss, while her husband does, too. Julie Christie gives an amazing, subtle central performance, as does Gordon Pinsent. It’s got a careful, slow rhythm, is edited with a non-linear precision that echoes the confusions of this disease, and is so utterly, perfectly crafted that it felt (alas) like a room impeccably designed and then hermetically sealed. Nary an emotion crept into my viewing.

I’m being rough–and I hadn’t posted on it to avoid this kind of easy slam. ‘Cause it is a good film, a “good” film, a good for you film, and all that. But tonight I watched a film with similar ambitions–written with a delicate precision, acted with great intensity–yet this film in large part succeeded, often quite astonishingly. The Secret Life of Words stars Sarah Polley, (more…)

Interesting, enjoyable, with some wonderful moments, but something of a letdown after ‘History of Violence.’ Whereas HoV is full of quiet menace, here the menace is right in your face, on the surface of the film. Cronenberg revels in the blood, from an opening assassination, through a bloody birth, to a remarkable scene in a public steambath which features a naked, tattooed Viggo Mortensen sliding in pools of blood. Whereas the transformation of the Mortensen character in HoV takes us by surprise, here he glowers and exudes power from the first moment we see him.

Some nice performances, especially Armin Mueller-Stahl, Naomi Watts, and Mortensen, when he lets his face crease and his hair flop a little. But I couldn’t help feeling that Cronenberg bought into the allure of the Russian mob a little too much. Oddly enough, this made me think fondly of a much earlier Mortensen film, ‘American Yakuza’: a true B-movie, but one that played with betrayal and honors in a mafia setting in ways that I found more satisfying than ‘Eastern Promises.’ [SPOILER] (more…)