AltWeeklies Wire
Director's Cut Resurrects Cult Filmnew
Hoping to capitalize on the film's growing cult following, Kelly's story of teenager Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has apocalyptic visions of the future, is being re-released theatrically. Kelly's Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut features additional '80s pop tunes and 20 more minutes of footage meant to clarify some of the story's loose ends.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
08-26-2004 |
Reviews
Mira Nair Spins Thackeray's Classic Heroinenew
Nair's multifaceted work has often focused on outsiders, from the Bombay strippers in her 1985 documentary India Cabaret, to the Cuban exiles living in Miami in The Perez Family. It thus seemed almost inevitable that Nair would one day turn to Vanity Fair, which she's loved since she first read it as a 16-year-old growing up in Orissa, India.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
08-26-2004 |
Profiles & Interviews
Tags: Mira Nair, Vanity Fair
Postmodern Infidelity Brewsnew
We Don't Live Here Anymore often feels like Reality Bites-brand slackers playacting at tweedy adulthood, trying to convey how, in the post-college, post-kids landscape, real ennui -- and real disappointment -- set in.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
08-19-2004 |
Reviews
Chinese Melodrama Derailsnew
As Anna Karenina taught us, doomed love affairs and trains definitely don't mix. The Chinese film Zhou Yu's Train certainly subscribes to that deadly equation in this Instant Romance (just add tears) about a woman, a man ... and a locomotive.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
08-13-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Zhou Yu's Train, Zhou Sun
A Siren Confesses Her Secrets in Talky Thrillernew
In an effort to maximize the intrigue, director Patrice Leconte uses some Bernard Herman-style music to suggest a build to thriller payoff, though that build is largely a ruse. The film's first half, with its promise of deep mysteries to be cracked wide open, never materializes in its less satisfying second half.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
08-13-2004 |
Reviews
Three Willful Women Cope in a Post-Stalin Worldnew
Since Otar Left, a French production set in the former Russian republic of Georgia, treats the other side of emigrant life: those people -- often old, often female -- left behind, who wait for letters, money and a keyhole glimpse into life on the other side.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
08-13-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Julie Bertucelli, Since Otar Left
Home Makes It Hard Not to Be Movednew
First-time director Michael Mayer's flawed, at times superficial, but nevertheless affecting adaptation of Michael Cunningham's novel explores anew the profound effect relationships -- either nurturing or truncated -- can have on his characters.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
08-05-2004 |
Reviews
Revisionist Rockers Metallica Go Deep in Fascinating Documentarynew
You don't have to be a Metallica or heavy metal fan to get lost in Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's captivating documentary.
In a final effort to prevent a breakup, the group calls in $40,000-a-month psychotherapist Phil Towle.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
08-05-2004 |
Reviews
Brotherhood of the Wave Binds Surfers Together in Riding Giantsnew
Stacy Peralta's breathtaking, exhilarating history of surfing and its personalities traces the sport's 1,000-year-old origins to its current incarnation as the province of extreme sportsmen towed into Hawaii's epic six-story waves.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
07-29-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Stacy Peralta, Riding Giants
Film Evokes Symbols of Blooming Femininity, Spiritual Wiltingnew
Maria Full of Grace is an intimate rendering of what it might feel like to be one of the faceless, disposable people on the bottom of the economic food chain.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
07-29-2004 |
Reviews
Corporate Culture Indicted in New Documentarynew
The Corporation is one of the most insidiously disturbing documentaries in the recent windfall of films. It blames the American philosophy of profit for the erosion of national values and morality.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
07-29-2004 |
Reviews
Pull the Shade on Genre-Bending Facing Windowsnew
Keep the audience guessing, Facing Windows suggests, and maybe no one will bother to ask where the hell it's all going.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
07-22-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Facing Windows, Ferzan Ozpetek
Director Updates Classic Bruised, Bitter Film Noirnew
You don't need to know what London criminal Will Graham (Clive Owen) saw or did to understand him in I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. Will is hardwired by the rules of the film noir genre -- which Hodges honors with due reverence -- for revenge.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
07-15-2004 |
Reviews
Delpy and Hawke Reconnect in Before Sunset new
Sequels are rarely improvements on the original, but Before Sunset is an exception to that rule. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are utterly charming as two quirky, overly analytical people whose cynicism blankets a soft core of romanticism.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
07-08-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Richard Linklater, Before Sunset
Family Values Reaffirmed in Kidnapping Thriller The Clearingnew
The Clearing is unconventional in some ways, for the age of its protagonists and for the way it bucks the usual thriller formula. Gone is the breakneck pacing and the kind of race-against-the-clock, heart-pounding hysteria that seems to dominate the genre.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Felicia Feaster |
07-08-2004 |
Reviews
Tags: Pieter Jan Brugge, The Clearing
