The dramatization of every action in Chandramukhi (2005) captures the very essence of Tamil cinema. With the exception of other South Indian language films, there is nothing like it.
I knew it was a universally critically panned box office failure, but every single person who I spoke to about it had nothing but praise for the film. Was Jennifer’s Body really as good as my peers said it was?
Short answer: yes. Long answer: fuck yes.
We’re never given a single hint of where Mr. Oscar came from or where he’s going, or really what it is his performances are even for. Every time we think we’re getting a sincere glimpse into his life, we realize it’s just another performance. The limo he’s shuffled around in is the only nucleus of stability we’re given for understanding Oscar and Celine, and I even hesitate to say we can trust these moments in the film.
Probably the closest I’ve come to feeling resolved about this issue of aging was in the ecstatic yet devastated state I found myself in walking out of the movie theatres after watching Richard Linklater’s latest and most ambitious film to date, Boyhood.
This is the closest cinema has come to reconciling narratives with the unpredictable and often anti-climactic nature of real life.
“Nymphomaniac”, Lars von Trier’s most recent film, begins with Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) battered and left in an alleyway to be discovered by Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård), who takes her in into his home. There, Joe begins to recount the sexual antics that led to her destitution.
December 23, 2001 is the last chance for Russian director Alexander Sokurov. Holed up inside St. Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum, an exhausted camera crew, two thousands actors in period costume, and three orchestras are waiting for the signal to start. This is the one fact that everyone who has heard of “Russian Ark” knows even before watching it: this movie was filmed entirely in one take. Using a Steadicam to stabilize the shot, the whole 96-minute movie was filmed and saved, uncompressed, onto a hard disk. No cuts, no transitions; this is the most realistic movie I’ve seen.
“The LEGO Movie,” in theaters now, is a hilarious 100-minute avalanche of virtual action scenes, pop-culture references, and successful satire that pours out of the screen and onto the audience. While the movie is aimed at children, the comedy is rife with subtle and subversive in-jokes that only older viewers will understand.
Locked Down is a movie that wants to be a lot of things. Written and filmed entirely in the pandemic and released on HBO Max earlier this year, it wants to be a cute romcom, an emotional and relatable look into life during the pandemic, and a stylish heist film. Unfortunately, it doesn’t hit the mark on any of them.