AltWeeklies Wire
Despite the Labels, SATC Movie is a Canal Street Knockoffnew
Trust me, there's precious little to give away other than labels, for though Sex and the City is every bit as busy as its HBO progenitor was, it's mostly plotless, not to mention pointless.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
05-30-2008 |
Reviews
Marisa Silver's Ares Ramirez Only Seems Normalnew
Silver gives voice to real outsiders, society's castoffs who eke out precarious livings around the edges of that other failure, the Salton Sea, a river deflected long ago in hopes of creating a desert oasis for tourists, and now so polluted and oversalinated that it washes up trash and dead fish by the thousand.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
05-27-2008 |
Fiction
'The Children of Huang Shi': Epic Borenew
Spottiswoode is hardly alone in distilling a distant country's pain into the story of one white Westerner, armed with a similarly pale romantic interest and wry native sidekick, making a difference while world history rages around him.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
05-27-2008 |
Reviews
Parenting Off the Grid and Off the Reservation in 'Surfwise'new
Halfway through Surfwise, a mesmerizingly ambivalent documentary about an itinerant family of Jewish surfer-dude health nuts, we meet the 84-year-old patriarch, "Doc" Paskowitz showing director Doug Pray a blown-up photo of a Nazi preparing to shoot a Jewish mother and child at close range.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
05-27-2008 |
Reviews
Behind the Scenes at the Sundance Labsnew
I'm headed up to the peaceful resort that houses Robert Redford's Sundance Institute and plays host every January to eight Fellows, handpicked from a pool of more than 2,000 applicants, for the coveted five-day Sundance Screenwriters Lab.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
05-09-2008 |
Movies
'Fugitive Pieces' Adaptation Sucks the Poetry Out of a Holocaust Survival Talenew
Canadian filmmaker Jeremy Podeswa has given it the old college try, but in pursuit of tact and sensitivity, he has hollowed out the novel's urgency -- its unflinching confrontation with the horrors of 20th-century history -- in favor of a vaguely spiritual morbidity that slides into mere pathos.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
05-02-2008 |
Reviews
'Jellyfish''s Etgar Keret: The Wizard of Idnew
Writer/director shoots from the hip about his low-budget movie and his high-budget life.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
04-28-2008 |
Profiles & Interviews
Al Pacino Plays Beat the Clock in '88 Minutes'new
Jon Avnet's cheesy new thriller is 105 minutes long, and going in, I feared that 100 of them would be eaten up by Al Pacino chewing the furniture. Alas, it's worse than that.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
04-18-2008 |
Reviews
Incredible Shrinking Womennew
As "English" as tea and toast, this mainstreamed movie has its eye on a global market.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
03-11-2008 |
Reviews
Far From Heavennew
Clearly inspired by Todd Haynes, Ira Sachs' film doesn't quite compare.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
03-11-2008 |
Reviews
Tags: Ira Sachs, Married Life
Feminin, Masculinnew
Jacques Rivette fights the battle of the sexes.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
02-29-2008 |
Reviews
Kids These Daysnew
Charlie Bartlett is the feature debut of Austin Powers' snappy film editor Jon Poll, so it is but a heartbeat cut till we meet our hero with his head down a toilet at the funky public school to which he has been dispatched by his desperate single mother.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
02-25-2008 |
Reviews
Tags: Charlie Bartlett, Jon Poll
Blood Moneynew
The Counterfeiters is morally ambiguous Holocaust tale of survival and collusion.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
02-25-2008 |
Reviews
The Year's Best Charactersnew
The best supporting actors have said there's little more satisfying than working in concert with a well-oiled ensemble. And little more fun to watch, which is why a package deal and a duet top my list of the best supporting actors of 2007.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
01-04-2008 |
Movies
Juan Antonio Bayona: Refinding Neverlandnew
A conversation with The Orphanage's master of melancholic terror.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
12-21-2007 |
Profiles & Interviews
Tags: Juan Antonio Bayona, The Orphanage
