Rogue: Unrated
August 14, 2008
After the surprise success of his debut film, Wolf Creek (2005), horror fans eagerly anticipated Greg McLean’s next film about a killer crocodile entitled, Rogue (2007). However, a rival croc film, Primeval (2007), stole its thunder, tanked at the box...
Smart People
August 12, 2008
Smart People (2008) is the latest in a long, checkered lineage of quirky, independent film dramedies (comedy-drama hybrids). Jodie Foster’s Home for the Holidays (1995) established the template with the following ingredients: take a dysfunctional family...
Lonesome Dove: Two-Disc Special Edition
August 11, 2008
Based on Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel of the same name, Lonesome Dove was adapted into a four-part television mini-series that focuses on the relationship between two retired Texas Rangers as they drive a cattle herd from Texas to Montana...
Shutter: Unrated
August 4, 2008
When Hollywood first started remaking Asian horror films, A-list actresses like Naomi Watts and Jennifer Connelly starred in them. Over time, as the public’s fascination with them waned, not so high-profile actresses like Amber Tamblyn and Kristen Bell...
Vampyr: Criterion Collection
July 30, 2008
Made in 1930 during the early days of sound, Vampyr (1932) was based on In A Glass Darkly, a collection of supernatural stories by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, and filmed in three languages (English, French and German) by Carl Theodor Dreyer. The film exists...
Stop-Loss
July 25, 2008
It has been almost ten years since Kimberly Peirce’s critically acclaimed, award-winning independent film, Boys Don’t Cry (1999). She’s returned with her first studio film – a drama about the current war in Iraq. So far, this kind of film has...
The Ruins: Unrated
July 21, 2008
The Ruins (2008) is the latest gruesome horror film with a xenophobic streak in the tradition of Hostel (2005) and Turistas (2006). Take a group of young, attractive American tourists, drop them into a strange, inhospitable country and punish them for...
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters: Criterion Collection
July 14, 2008
Initially, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) seems like the odd man out in writer/director Paul Schrader’s filmography. It takes a complex look at the life of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima who ended his own life by committing the ritual act of...
The Furies
July 7, 2008
Director Anthony Mann made the important transition from film noir B movies to westerns in 1950 with three films: Winchester ’73, Devil’s Doorway, and The Furies. The last film was an ambitious big budget mix of western and women’s melodrama with...
My Blueberry Nights
June 27, 2008
For years, Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai has resisted the lure of the United States, content to make his films in his native country (with the exception of Happy Together which was shot in South America) without any Hollywood movie stars. This has...
