Film
Two Acts of War
SEAL team vs. Korean Clichés Taken as a singular feat of selfless will—and war, we’re reminded, is “a country of will”—Act of Valor serves an oblique purpose as a bracing, unspoken homage to Michael Monsoor, awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for jumping on a live grenade to spare his fellow Navy SEALs and allied...
Dynamiting Stereotypes: Jared Hess puts TV on blast
Fox TV’s new Napoleon Dynamite cartoon confirms Jared Hess’ step up in status from cult director to protean pop auteur. As co-creator of the show (adapted from his 2004 live-action feature film), he has faithfully guided his vision into a new medium, almost to an entirely new idiom. Even with a good deal of the...
Perverse Anticipation: More art movie nihilism in Michael
Not to be confused with Carl Theodor Dreyer’s profound 1924 Michael (Mikaël), the new Michael, by Austrian filmmaker Markus Schleinzer, is far from a masterwork; in fact it is the most revolting new movie since ’s Funny Games. Schleinzer (who was casting director on Haneke’s Children of the Corn-type epic The White Ribbon) plays a...
Heavy Metal Gothic: Ghost Rider Redeems and Critiques
If the filmmaking team Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor wrote out their thoughts on how contemporary pop has traduced fun, warped thrills and debased energy in the art form they love, it would be a great provocative piece of criticism—although few film publications would want such a principled view of the destructive entertainment that’s routinely...
The Also-Rans: Shame on Steve McQueen
This exclusive CityArts series will chart recent releases that failed to get Oscar nominations. Yet, just like the Oscar-nominated fare, these movies are not a part of film culture, but exist outside what moviegoers care about and talk about. Their staggered release delays the effects of film on the public; they don’t want for popular...
Diaspora Story for All: A Biblical Trek in ‘400 Miles’
By Elena Oumano “You don’t look Jewish” (meaning not like the stereotypical hook-nosed European) is not a compliment, no matter what the speaker’s intentions. And what do Jews look like anyway? 400 Miles to Freedom, directed by husband and wife team Avishai and Shari Rothfarb Mekonen, addresses this and other issues of Jewish identity in...
Tiresome Threesome: Movie Star Casualties in ‘This Means War’
In the stultifying Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, British actor Tom Hardy briefly appeared in a romantic subplot as a heartbroken, repentant operative who laments all the impenetrable death and subterfuge simply because it cost him the woman he loved. For a few fleeting moment, Hardy’s alert eyes, sensual lips and magnetic ruddiness broke through film’s...
The Also-Rans: Rampart’s Hipster Cop
This exclusive CityArts series will chart the recent peculiar releases that failed to get Oscar nominations. Yet, just like the Oscar-nominated fare, these movies are not a part of film culture but exist outside what moviegoers patronize and talk about. The films’ staggered release from December 2011 to early 2012 delays the effects of film...
Rihanna’s True Confession: A Pop Star’s Music Video Rebellion
“Trust the tale, not the teller,” D.H. Lawrence’s essential dictum, applies to Rihanna’s recent music video “We Found Love.” Transparently autobiographical in its reference to the 2009 assault incident involving Rihanna and Chris Brown, “We Found Love” answers back to those tellers—in this case gossip-mongers and pundits—whose pontifications reduced Rihanna and Brown to domestic-abuse stereotypes....
Lichtenstein in Motion: Three Surprises on Whitney Screens
By Marsha McCreadie They are in town for a just a few more days, but since the only three films by Roy Lichtenstein, of Pop Art and the comic book style, haven’t been screened since 1971, you don’t have to think twice about catching them. Three Landscapes: A Film Installation by Roy Lichtenstein is at...
Denzel Goes Rogue: Safe House Chases Fake Politics
Safe House, an espionage chase film set in South Africa, is rotten enough to be a sequel to District 9, where South African racial issues were treated to a dumb sci-fi alien allegory. Here, the alien is Denzel Washington, who first appears walking down a Johannesburg street in a Malcolm X beard and fedora. But...
Tarr and Horse Feathers: Art Movie Turns to Glue
Bela Tarr’s The Turin Horse isn’t funny at all but it sure is laughable. A Hungarian farmer with a bum arm, Ohlsdorfer (Janos Derzi), lives in a drab, yet limitless cabin with his morose spinster daughter (Erika Bok), who boils potatoes that go half-eaten. This goes on for two and half hours. What’s laughable are...
Architecture on Screen
This Feb. 3 and Feb. 4, The Center for Architecture and MUSE Film and Television present Architecture on Screen, selections from the 29th Montreal International Festival of Films on Art. The two-day affair will see films about Copenhagen’s city hall (A City Hall for All Occasions), Bauhaus, Le Corbusier and Daniel Burnham, among others, as...
Theory Vs. Practice: A Dazzling Allegory In Chronicle
“Ever hear of Plato’s allegory of the cave?” one teenager asks another in Chronicle. This philosophy quiz was unexpected in the midst of a thrill ride movie but Chronicle is so surprisingly interesting, I wondered if its makers ever saw The Conformist (1971), where Bernardo Bertolucci visualized Plato’s allegory. When it’s good, Chronicle is less...
Jar Jar Binks Goes to War
Lucas crashes Red Tails George Lucas’ sales tactics for Red Tails, his $93 million production about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American pilots in the armed forces, make a bigger bang than the film itself. On the publicity rounds, Lucas has talked about the dearth of movies with African-American heroes, promising that Red Tails will...
Stained-Glass Melodrama: Zhang’s ‘Flowers’ Blooms
In The Flowers of War, filmmaker Zhang Yimou presents the Japanese occupation of Nanking in 1937 through the point of view of Chinese Catholic schoolgirl Shujuan (Xinyi Zhang). The rape of Nanking coincides with the development of Shujuan’s sexual identity as a woman, an experience that colors her memories of national trauma. To dramatize this,...
Bravery and Mastery
Spielberg’s “lost” treasures Though it’s tempting to dwell upon Steven Spielberg’s superior visual aesthetics—his mellifluous and unstudied reimagining of the Ford and Lean “scene” in War Horse, the extra-dimensional lighting and thrillingly untethered camera of Tintin—it’s the storytelling project that distinguishes both films. A mark of what jazz musician Kenny Werner calls effortless mastery, Spielberg’s...
Spielberg’s Game Changers
Movie watching can never be the same after the doubleheader of Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin, his first animated film, and his live-action War Horse. Each film upgrades the way our imaginations construct the world, the way we see ourselves in the digital age. All art devotees should recognize the history being made. Tintin,...
The Art of Noise: Dolly and Latifah reclaim glee
Todd Graff’s Joyful Noise tells the story of a Pacashau, Ga., church choir entering a gospel music competition against better-financed groups. It’s an underdog fable that neatly parallels Graff’s own career since directing his 2003 debut film Camp, the underappreciated—yet secretly influential—pop music celebration set at a training school for young musical theater aspirants. This...
The 2011 Better-Than List
Armond White looks back at the best movies that surpass and defy the year’s worst We’ve reached the point where movies are less popular than other forms of pop culture yet remain compelling—as much for what they recall about the humanities as the inhumanity they routinely deliver. Thus 2011′s year-end mania for the specious cultural...
Three Degrees of Art: Paul Sharits’ on location masterpieces
Paul Sharits made his first film Wintercourse (1962) at age 19 while studying painting at the University of Denver. There he became a protégé of Stan Brakhage, 10 years older and already in the forefront of the international film avant-garde. The “beat era” was evolving into “counterculture,” and Sharits’ generation began inheriting the weight of...
