AltWeeklies Wire
The Kid With a Bike is a moving tale from the great Dardenne brothersnew
While I'm grateful for any opportunity to see a film by les Dardennes, this latest makes me wonder if they've become risk-averse.
Strikingly similar stories from Israel and Japan in Footnote and Jiro Dreams of Sushinew
One is a fiction feature from Israel; the other is a documentary about a Tokyo sushi chef. The dissimilarities end there. Both films feature an aging father and a middle-aged son, and both depict the lifelong obsession of the older man and the pitfalls of passing the torch to his heir.
Tags: Jiro Dreams of Sushi
For Jesse Owens, What Happened After the Olympics Is Its Own Storynew
The son of Alabama sharecroppers and grandson of a slave, Jesse Owens won a record four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Five months later, he was racing a gelding for money on a dirt track in Cuba.
Polish film In Darkness Digs Deeper into WWII anti-Semitismnew
In Darkness is an unhappy portrait of humanity flailing about in the sewers, and things didn't get much worse than Poland and Ukraine in 1943: Virtually all of the 200,000 Jews in the vicinity of Lvov were annihilated.
Every parent's nightmare in We Need to Talk About Kevinnew
The bulk of Kevin is art house horror; Swinton confers its humanity.
The human beast in Bullhead and Thin Icenew
The Belgian crime drama Bullhead, which was among this year's foreign film Oscar nominees, is as clumsy and misshapen as its unfortunate protagonist, a bulked-up cattle farmer and gangster named Jacky Vanmarsenille.
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
Not Your Reagan-era 21 Jump Streetnew
This remake is more deconstruction than devotion, and if you don't believe me, wait and see how it handles a particular high-profile cameo.
Disappointing Disney adaptation of pulp hero John Carternew
For the last 100 years, John Carter has been an inspirational, beloved hero. Now thanks to this adaptation, a pulp icon will be known as the jerkwad from that lame-ass Disney movie.
Tags: John Carter
From Iran, the Oscar-winning A Separationnew
Far, far away from the stumbling American film industry, people still make movies not to further licensing agreements or to stoke self-serving nostalgia but to tell their stories. A Separation is the freshest, most deserving feature film that the Academy recognized.
Sadness and Stultification in Albert Nobbsnew
Glenn Close plays Albert Nobbs, a nonentity with a traumatic, largely suppressed past who has survived for three decades dressing and working as a man.
The Artist is deserving of the feverish praise it has inspirednew
A French silent film as Oscar's Best Picture of 2011? I'm voting oui.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close's premise is apposite and affectingnew
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close tackles 9/11, a cinematic third-rail used as the milieu for films both brilliant (United 93) and inept (World Trade Center; Remember Me).
Shame isn't as shaming as it thinks it isnew
First off, let me just say I don't feel sorry for any dude whose dick I can see from the back. That's the first strike against the lead character as played by Michael Fassbender in Steve McQueen's latest film, Shame.
