AltWeeklies Wire
Safety Not Guaranteed raises low-key and worthwhile questionsnew
Can someone who is very serious about something laughably eccentric be treated with respect? How far can a movie dissociate itself from its plot's reason for existing and remain honest?
Woody Allen's To Rome with Love explores that whole sad clown thingnew
Ruggero Leoncavallo's famous opera Pagliacci (or Clowns) is a perfect fit for Allen's themes, if not for his lifelong identity: This is the opera where that whole sad clown thing comes from.
A benign, cozy world in Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdomnew
Anderson makes us long to be in the shoes of these characters by sealing his universe into a well-haberdashed container of nostalgia.
Tags: Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom
A surprising killer in Bernie, Richard Linklater's Texas black comedynew
The biggest surprise about Bernie is the way it shifts from a chirpy comedy about cold-blooded murder to a tricky moral tale without weighing down its easygoing tone or casual, jokey spirit.
Tags: Bernie, Jack Black
A metaphor that's all too easy to follow in Salmon Fishing in the Yemennew
The only way to appreciate this movie about going against the current is to value how effortlessly it flows in exactly the direction you'd expect.
Prolonged adolescence in Jeff, Who Lives at Homenew
In the second mainstream release from the Duplass brothers, the pieces fit conveniently together; but when the puzzle is so easy, that's not much of an accomplishment.
Tags: Jeff, Who Lives at Home
Scouting This Year's Short Film Oscar Nomineesnew
The Carolina Theatre will be screening one program for the live action shorts and one for the animated shorts.
Characters can't leave the room in Polanski's latest, Carnagenew
For God's sake, why don't the Cowans just leave? The answer lies in the fact that, for his whole career, Roman Polanski has been interested in domestic interiors and how they take hold of his characters.
Tags: Roman Polanski, Carnage
The Best (So-So) Movies of 2011new
Five lists from five film critics, and a few quibbles ...
INDY Week |
Craig D. Lindsey, David Fellerath, Neil Morris, Nathan Gelgud and Laura Boyes |
12-21-2011 |
Movies
Tags: Best Movies of 2011
Charlize Theron Plays a Selfish Writer in Young Adultnew
This movie is about a stupid woman behaving very badly, and it's rebelliously free of redeeming values.
To the end of the world with Lars von Trier in Melancholianew
Melancholia is a lingering, thorny, beautiful experience that makes our doomed planet and our fickle lives richer for the tiny amount of time we're here to appreciate them.
My Week with Marilyn's intellectual slovenlinessnew
Director Simon Curtis' film is not effective or well-made enough to make any lasting impressions, but that doesn't mean its sentiments are any less inartistic or offensive.
Young lovers and Rip City in Gus Van Sant's Restlessnew
This is a love story that doesn't put too much in its lovers' way, even though it does put a time limit on it.
Tags: Restless, Gus Van Sant
The Future Charts Modern Anxietynew
The Future follows Sophie and Jason (July and Hamish Linklater, both of them sincere and focused), a couple in their mid-30s emerging from an agonizingly believable extended adolescence.
Tags: The Future
Aliens land in an English slum in Attack the Blocknew
In Attack the Block, English comedy writer/ performer and first-time filmmaker Joe Cornish trumps political shortcomings with brilliant, surprising filmmaking, turning a modest sci-fi comedy into the perfect example of what fun movies should be like.
