Often misunderstood, and romanticized for the wrong reasons—and such was the power of Mario Puzo’s Godfather screen adaptation—the mob genre is mistakenly celebrated at each cycle of reinvention. The Italian mafia in films has undergone a persistent makeover, resurrecting in newer, grimier skin each time around to the shortsighted delightContinue Reading
Your reception to Thesis on a Homicide will vary depending on your appreciation for ambiguity and tolerance for redundancy. Thankfully, Thesis keeps both criteria to one instance of each. But before another word is said, it is incumbent upon your boy to point out that this is a film literalContinue Reading
Man, Ricardo Darin is on a roll. Seems like every movie I’ve seen of his—well, all of two so far—has him pulling some major poon at some point in the plot. In impoverished Argentina, Carancho is the colloquialism for ambulance chasers, or rubbernecks on a mission (the mission being toContinue Reading
The proliferation of the MILF and Cougar figures, if anything, can be understood as man’s misguided attempt at optimal ass. Here’s how. The notion that sexual prime seldom meets youthful exuberance that long lends elusiveness to the ideal balance. Bloom and maturity are concurrent but for a brief time, atContinue Reading
Heli, the third film from Cannes favorite Amat Escalante, is a myopic treatment of the pervasive of the Mexico of new in not so much offering a tunnel-visioned exposé of the ubiquitous. Quite the contrary, it is a microscopic view of the commonplace. A lens magnifying the molecular, with Heli,Continue Reading
Far from the tour de force treatments of similar subject matter often aspire to, La Haine is no less a poetic coup de maitre of filmmaking. Inspired by the mid 80s Paris demonstrations, footage of which is used to open the film, it required a little creative license of KassovitzContinue Reading
Ils is the 2006 French horror film starring Olivia Bonamy & Michaël Cohen. Written and directed by David Moreau & Xavier Palud. Given how “based on” films are often the telltale signifiers of the dearth of original material to glean a full feature from, Ils is far from the usualContinue Reading
The two times I sat in parts of it, I don’t remember Brotherhood of the Wolf being the sloppy, hodgepodge I finally saw in totality last night. Pouty SaudiSometimes rowdy, sometimes pouty.Continue Reading
