// Category Archive for: Movie Reviews

Ten Reasons Why You Should See In Bruges

By Michelle Patterson

In Bruges, a delightful and surprising film out of Ireland that won critical acclaim in 2008—winning a Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Golden Globe for Colin Farrell, gaining an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and winning numerous awards in its native country—deserves much credit for being a genuinely black comedy.

When it is funny, it creates guffaws a-plenty and when it is black, it is inky, friends. What is most astonishing is how it manages to allow the proper amount of depth within the characterization. Yet, when one considers that the filmmaker, Martin MacDonagh, is a well-established playwright and has a Best Live Action Short Film Academy Award under his belt for his first foray into film, Six Shooter, it isn’t really that shocking. We’re also reminded that Colin Farrell can act. So, let’s settle into the Top Ten Moments of one brilliant piece of Irish filmmaking.
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Legion

By Lisa Anderson

If you’ve gone to the movies in the past few months, you’re probably at least peripherally aware of Legion. It’s the movie advertised by the cardboard cutout of the winged, shirtless man with weapons in both hands. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know that its premise is that God gets fed up with humanity and sends angels to exterminate us, but that there’s a baby who can turn everything around if only it survives, and one lone angel who wants to help. Even with all of that, though, I went in not really knowing what to expect.
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Sherlock Holmes

By Lisa Anderson

If you read my article in Popshifter about previous incarnations of Sherlock Holmes, you know that I was skeptical about Guy Ritchie’s take on the timeless detective. I got the opportunity to go to an early screening this week, and was pleasantly surprised. In fact, I was blown away by how much I liked it.
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High School Record DVD

By Noreen Sobczyk

File under “seemed like a really good idea.” This film, which played Sundance in 2005, was essentially promoted as a tale of awkward high school students and their escapades of embarrassment. But it came off more like indie hipsters trying hard to act like awkward geeks in situations the director/writer (Ben Wolfinsohn) thought were terribly clever. As it happens, the film features members of No Age, Mika Miko, and Lavender Diamond. There was also a short cameo by Mike Watt (Minutemen).

It’s a bare bones budget film inspired by a short which is included in the DVD bonus features. Unfortunately one of the most clever moments of the film was extremely similar. Also unfortunate: the film is cast with actors who seemingly never bothered to learn to act. And the viewer is therefore never drawn in enough to forget they are watching a film. Perhaps the director is a fan of the punk rock film Suburbia (cast with local punks), and was emulating the same vibe achieved there by Penelope Spheeris. Or he might have been aiming for the kitschiness of Dave Markey’s Desperate Teenage Lovedolls. Odds are it was a riff on Napoleon Dynamite and Freaks and Geeks. High School Record falls short on all accounts.

This mockumentary opens with a performance by a male/female guitar/drums duo who made me curse the existence of The White Stripes. This band decides to film their art school classmates for a documentary which focuses chiefly on four high school seniors and their clumsy attempts at popularity and sex. The strongest component of the film is the short lived relationship between Sabrina and Caleb. Their dynamic is unique, engaging, and simultaneously painful to watch. Sabrina isn’t interested in Caleb’s attempts to make a space age cooking show for kids, and is embarrassed when he sports tinfoil shorts to school. That moment might have been brilliant if its intended effect weren’t already perfectly achieved by the donning of an infamously ridiculous polyester jumpsuit by Sam on an episode of Freaks and Geeks.

Overall, the film had several eclectic and funny moments. The trouble is that they were stretched out over 89 minutes chock full of unsuccessful gags and slow periods. Had the film been limited to 60 minutes, and the participants been a bit less precious, it may have been more successful.

You may order High School Record directly from the Factory Twenty Five website. You can also check out images and a clip from the film there or watch a trailer on YouTube.

Moon: Look At Yourself

By Jemiah Jefferson

Moon is a great example of how to make an engaging, gripping science fiction film with not too much money, but a solid appreciation of cinematic and narrative possibility. It is a remarkable achievement from well-regarded journeyman actor Sam Rockwell and director Duncan Jones, who knocks it way out of the park on his first feature film.
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Perrier’s Bounty

By Less Lee Moore

This piece originally appeared on the The CillianSite.com on September 14.

For our story of Cillian Murphy’s appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival, go here.

Criss- and double-crosses, lyrical-yet-unpretentious dialogue, and the black comedy of desperation crown the new film by Irish director Ian Fitzgibbon in Perrier’s Bounty, starring Cillian Murphy, Jim Broadbent, Jodie Whittaker, and Brendan Gleeson. If you liked 2003’s sardonic ensemble piece Intermission, also scripted by Mark O’Rowe, you’ll adore Perrier’s Bounty, though it’s decidedly darker, more violent, and more compact.
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Moon: A Glimpse at the Dark Side

By David Speranza

When Star Wars came out in 1977, I was among its more ardent fans, seeing it upwards of ten times before it left theaters. But as the years passed and my tastes matured, it became apparent that the coming of Star Wars had essentially meant the end of thoughtful, adult science fiction in movies.
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District 9

By Michelle Patterson

A car windshield splattered and smeared with the guts of bugs and men and swirls of dust and haze appears in front of the camera, doubling as a means to lessen the intense sun of South Africa. The bloody spray of horror married with the vroom-vroom of the action film—all in the midst of a bleak near-future within the science-fiction genre. It adds to the grime of this particular dystopia.
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Halloween 2, Written/Directed By Rob Zombie

By Danny R. Phillips

I am a fan of the horror genre, everything from Lon Chaney’s silent classic Phantom of The Opera to slasher gems like the first A Nightmare on Elm Street. Of all the on-screen killing machines director John Carpenter has created, the wordless, soulless Michael Myers is my all-time favorite. The first Halloween movie from 1978 is without question a classic of style, suspense, violence, and good writing. It stands in a class with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, House of Wax (the Vincent Price original, not the Paris Hilton piece of shit), Evil Dead, and Bride of Frankenstein.
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Whip It

By Laura L.

For the past few years, I’ve been a member of a roller derby league in St. Louis, MO: the Arch Rival Roller Girls. When I heard Whip It was in the works, I hoped they would do the sport some justice. It had previously been portrayed in the Raquel Welch film Kansas City Bomber and the short-lived A&E reality series Rollergirls, in addition to an episode here and there on a number of other shows. Yet rarely did I come away from any of these with a good feeling in the pit of my stomach. While not perfect in its portrayal of modern-day roller derby, Whip It left me with that good feeling.
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