Category Archives: likey

tintin

Posted on 7/4/2012 by arnab

i watched this last night. i’d wanted to see it on the big screen when it first came out but fear of seeing a major part of my childhood destroyed kept me away. i’d read that the film mashes up … Continue reading →

Posted in likey | 6 Comments

Stormare . . . .whoa whoa whoa whoa

Posted on 10/23/2011 by reynolds

Small Town Murder Songs is that rare film that feels condensed without being rushed. It defines a community, a deep bench of idiosyncratic yet wholly believable characters any one of whom could be a narrative focus–as if opening a fantastic … Continue reading →

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Super

Posted on 8/13/2011 by reynolds

James Gunn’s version of the superheroes-are-really-pathetic-losers film didn’t, on paper, seem to cry out for my attention. People said it was a lot more Travis Bickle than Kick-Ass, which was less deconstructive than delirious about the silliness of certain genre … Continue reading →

Posted in (by verdict), likey | 1 Comment

Transfo… ah, the hell with that — The Unjust

Posted on 7/3/2011 by reynolds

I did see the latest Baypalooza, notable only for being somewhat more visually coherent than the last two robots-bashing-robots films. Alas, that’s still only about 3 or 4% overall coherence. It was reasonably entertaining; the 7-year-old with me was itchy … Continue reading →

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Hanna

Posted on 6/19/2011 by reynolds

Joe Wright’s trippy little “action film” seems to have begun as a straightforward high-concept no-brainer — teen girl, raised by father just inside the Arctic circle, is a survivalist wunderkind with a backstory just waiting to be booted up. And, … Continue reading →

Posted in (by verdict), likey, recently watched | 4 Comments

Varmints

Posted on 3/4/2011 by reynolds

Gore Verbinski’s Rango riffs on the West and the Western, never quite escaping the gravity well of genre conventions; it also nimbly dances through the minefields of cheap reductive parody or punch(line)drunken gag-sap-gag-moral-gag-triumph which crowd the children’s animated film market, … Continue reading →

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Enter the Void

Posted on 1/30/2011 by reynolds

Gaspar Noe’s film is shot almost entirely in p.o.v., the protagonist a young guy doing and dealing drugs in a seedy, emphatically-neon Tokyo. Early voiceovers–where he tells himself things that no sapient creature would ever need to say, or even … Continue reading →

Posted in likey | 4 Comments

Four Lions

Posted on 1/17/2011 by reynolds

I am constitutionally primed to enjoy a film which yuks it up around subjects that terrify or infuriate, and when I heard about Chris Morris’ slapsticky take on radicalized English Muslims, intent on joining the jihad through suicide bombing… well, … Continue reading →

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omg The Maid (chile)

Posted on 11/25/2010 by gio

opening scene. raquel, a youngish-looking maid in a wealthy chilean household, is thrown an after-dinner birthday party by the family she has been serving for 20 years. turns out it’s her 40th birthday. you do the math. twenty years? 40 … Continue reading →

Posted in (by verdict), likey | 4 Comments

Crime stories, sort of

Posted on 11/18/2010 by reynolds

I’d recommend three recently-watched films, each of which plays with the structure and function of crime narratives in ways that intriguingly reframe the romanticization common to the genre. All are good, but I’ll start with the least successful and work … Continue reading →

Posted in (random lists), likey, recently watched | 13 Comments