AltWeeklies Wire
Spike Jonze Turns Maurice Sendak's Classic Children's Book into an Adult Work of Artnew
Jonze's sensibility is an authentic development of the music-video era's generational split -- which is also an aesthetic split. He doesn't exploit pop rebellion but has a counter-intuitive slant on what's funny, sad, universal.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-15-2009 |
Reviews
Chris Rock Never Embraces the Nap in His Doc About African-American Hairnew
Good Hair is a mockumentary by accident because Rock pretends to explore the cultural phenomenon of how black women truly feel about their hair. Yet he relentlessly falls back on easy jokes and juvenile asides that mock the subject.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-08-2009 |
Reviews
Ricky Gervais Lands in Cloudcuckooland With 'Invention of Lying'new
Ricky Gervais, the film's star and co-writer/co-director, doesn't do philosophical scrutiny or hermeneutic analysis; he merely undermines religion using the glib condescension of Hollywood leftists who assume the only people who still believe in God live in fly-over America. A hostile new trend has begun.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-01-2009 |
Reviews
The Coen Brothers Clarify Their Jewishness -- Without Guiltnew
The Coens admit their own Jewishness the way their best recent films admit Americanness: with genuine feeling for the complexities, abundance and absurd conventions that give us our identity.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-01-2009 |
Reviews
Harmony Korine Talks About Creating a World of 'Killing, Fucking and Burning'new
When I sat down with Korine last week before the world premiere of Trash Humpers, he hadn't done any interviews about it yet, and admitted that he wasn't quite sure how to express his intentions. So we hammered it out together.
New York Press |
Eric Kohn |
10-01-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews
Tags: Trash Humpers, Harmony Korine
Tucker Max Wants You to Like Him for Being an Unapologetic Dickheadnew
The film adaptation of Max's notoriously infantile and incredibly popular tell-all memoir about his fratboy sexcapades is not immediately repugnant. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell only becomes truly insipid when it makes a cloying, half-hearted attempt to show that Max and his buddies have learned the error of their ways and now have greater respect for women and themselves.
New York Press |
Simon Abrams |
09-24-2009 |
Reviews
Mumblecore King Henry Jaglom Returns With 'Irene in Time'new
If Jaglom was a trustfunded neophyte, he'd be acclaimed the King of Mumblecore -- a genre that, it turns out, he pioneered several decades ago.
New York Press |
Armond White |
09-24-2009 |
Reviews
Doc About Chevron's Eco Destruction, While Better Than Most, Still Doesn't Measure Up as Artnew
Crude touches all manifestations of oil greed which P.T. Anderson avoided when making his contemptuous anti-American pseudo-epic There Will Be Blood. Anderson kowtowed to trite anti-Bush cynicism, not even doing justice to the muckraking source novel, Oil!, by Upton Sinclair. Blood was trendy, Crude is aggrieved.
New York Press |
Armond White |
09-10-2009 |
Reviews
'Amreeka' Skillfully Evokes American Post-9/11 Uneasenew
Amreeka hops over every one of its predictable, carefully laid-out hurdles.
New York Press |
Armond White |
09-03-2009 |
Reviews
Ang Lee and James Schamus Take a Dry Look at Free-Love in 'Taking Woodstock'new
The same year as Woodstock, Arthur Penn's anti-bucolic Alice's Restaurant memorably said farewell to hippiedom's illusions. Penn's insights seemed ahead of his time; It's depressing that he was also ahead of Lee and Schamus 40 years later.
New York Press |
Armond White |
08-28-2009 |
Reviews
Tags: Taking Woodstock, Ang Lee
'Inglourious Basterds' Uses the Holocaust as a Pretext for Gore, Sadism and Fanboy Lorenew
"Back to Barbarism" is the theme of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Its misspelled title and cheesy homage to a 1970s grindhouse flick (by Enzo Castellari) all mock the notion of sophistication. Yet it is truly unsophisticated.
New York Press |
Armond White |
08-20-2009 |
Reviews
New Documentary 'Art & Copy' Celebrates the Men Behind Ads by Skimming the Surfacenew
Advertising has long been perceived as a mirror reflecting reality back to consumers as a wish-fulfillment exercise. In that sense, Art & Copy is a worthy addition to a time-honored tradition.
New York Press |
Mark Peikert |
08-20-2009 |
Reviews
Todd Graff's 'Bandslam' is the Best American Movie This Summernew
If the late John Hughes had taught the generation who grew up on Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Home Alone anything beyond narcissism, then Bandslam would be getting sky-high praise.
New York Press |
Armond White |
08-20-2009 |
Reviews
Making a Compelling Film is Not Julia Child's Playnew
A Talking Heads song gives this pedestrian, snobbish film a couple minutes of genuine art - and fun. Julie & Julia doesn’t match the delights of sensual/aesthetic food movies ... it merely dramatizes Julia Child and Julie Powell's contrasting routes to media success.
New York Press |
Armond White |
08-06-2009 |
Reviews
Some of Your Beeswax: Director Andrew Bujalski Chatsnew
If the word “mumblecore” ever meant anything in the first place, it definitely had something to do with Andrew Bujalski. The lo-fi indie director of Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation debuted his third feature, Beeswax, in March, and speaks about the film festival favorite.
New York Press |
Eric Kohn |
08-06-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews
