"Shark. The word itself has an almost onomatopoetic ring to it, the sharp, lean sonance being closely akin to the animal itself. Say it aloud: SHARK. A mean, jagged sound, cruel and malevolent and severe in utterance."—from Allan C. Weisbecker's In Search of Captain Zero You could say the same of Wu-Tang Clan founding father, [...]
Because more than four years have passed since that Valentine's Day concert at the House of Blues in Las Vegas, I can honestly say I'm no longer mad at the heckler who bellowed over and over again at the supremely confident, serenely composed figure on stage: "Erykah Badu! You a sexy motherfucker!" At the time, [...]
SO much of commercial culture and the 24-hour news cycle it supports are based on images and certainty. The former lend credence to the latter, rendering our ability to see the truth in both senses of the term impossible without completing an extra-credit assignment. That's why we feel so grateful at the end of the animated movie/documentary hybrid Waltz with Bashir: It celebrates the power and primacy of images while calling into question those who create them.
THE temptation to lavish praise on Clint Eastwood is tough to deny, even when he delivers so bungled a film -- both as director and actor -- as his latest, Gran Torino. No other contemporary filmmaker works as hard as Eastwood at understanding the American character, whether during war (Flags of Our Fathers) or wandering [...]
From the fractured narrative to the torture fetish, writer-director Larry Bishop's jambalaya of soft-core porn and bloody revenge Hell Ride has its producer Quentin Tarantino's gory sneer smeared all over it. Set in the dust-choked glare of the American Southwest, this spare (in terms of length and plot) exploitation flick tracks across the open highway [...]
"IF I GREW UP ON A FARM and was retarded, Bruges might impress me." That's antsy and immature Irish hitman Ray's (Colin Farrell) impression of the gloomy medieval Belgian town he and his older, wiser partner Ken (Brendan Gleeson) have been banished to for unknown reasons by their psychotic boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes). It also [...]
HAS MICHAEL MOORE STARTED AN UNHOLY TREND of inserting personality politics into documentary filmmaking? It's a habit that not only tends to undermine whatever argument he's pushing (if they hate the messenger, they aren't listening to the message) but bastardizes a genre whose tried-and-true tactics work just fine without all the oversized ego obscuring the [...]
THE DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER Alex Gibney opens his Oscar-nominated Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room with Tom Waits' scraggly refrain: "What's he building in there?" The singer-songwriter's haunting inquiry plays over shots of the towers of the once-mighty Texas energy colossus and creates a sense of mystery and, even, fear. It's the latter response, in [...]
THE NEW BRAZILIAN IMPORT City of Men, like its 2003 companion City of God, achieves what so many films detailing slum life, no matter their provenance, never quite can -- balance and distance. Either we have Boyz N the Hood, which softens the blows by focusing on do-gooders momentarily caught up in it, thus providing [...]
MICHEL GONDRY NEEDS to get Charlie Kaufman on the phone, pronto. The two collaborations between the French director and American screenwriter have produced films (2001's Human Nature and 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) that journey to the great beyond without getting lost, because their fantastical narratives provide commentaries on human truths cleverly masked [...]