A triumphant return from the annals of obscure near-incomprehensibility for director Peter Greenaway, but still rife with his trademark challenges like nudity, philosophical conversations, and vomit, Eisenstein in Guanajuato is an intellectual treat if you can handle the meat.
It doesn’t get more formulaic than McFarland, USA, but Niki Caro’s biographical sports film benefits from a charming cast and an accurate, timely examination of modern Mexican-American culture.
Sweeping, epic, magisterial, and grand, Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert is a film of scale with admirable ambition. There are unending landscape shots of an unending desert whipping sand in every direction under harsh winds. There are intimate portraits in beautiful low-light. There are sequences of incredible mise-en-scène filled with outstanding production design. And […]
Berlinale’s opening film, Nobody Wants the Night begins as an epic adventure film full of clichés and ends up an intimate character study of two women in a confined space. Set in 1908, the film tells the story of fictional characters based on real-life people. Juliette Binoche plays the dainty Mrs. Josephine Peary, whose husband is on […]
Amour Fou is a funny, cynical costume drama with a wicked sense of humor and an impressive visual palette that offers a master class in how to make a biographical film.
Despite a phenomenal performance from Bradley Cooper, and some of the year’s best cinematography by Tom Stern, American Sniper never does justice to its late hero in the way that it sets out to.
“Wild” features some of Jean-Marc Vallee’s most accomplished work behind the camera, and in the editing room, but it never manages to maintain the constant energy it needs to have the brisk pace that it wants, especially at an overlong 115 minutes.
