AltWeeklies Wire
Spy vs. Spy: Tony Gilroy’s 'Duplicity'new
Julia Roberts goes mano a mano with Clive Owen.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
03-20-2009 |
Reviews
Framed Like a Rembrandt, 'Everlasting Moments' Looks Great, But Misses the Big Picturenew
Lovely to look at but too slow and deliberate to get lost in, Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments is a tribute to still photography filtered through a portrait of working-class life wracked by war and want in early-20th-century Sweden.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
03-05-2009 |
Reviews
'Crossing Over': Wayne Kramer's Borderline Offensivenew
Haven't we been here before? The inbred mutant offspring of Crash and Babel, Crossing Over treats the subject of illegal immigrants coming to (and from) Los Angeles with the same vulgarity Kramer brought to his 2006 children-in-peril thriller, Running Scared.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
02-27-2009 |
Reviews
Tags: Wayne Kramer, Crossing Over
Looking for 'Slow Cinema' at the Berlin International Film Festivalnew
If this year's Berlinale was dominated and ultimately defined by polyglot international coproductions that, as one British colleague joked, might have been rated "G" for globalization, the festival's most memorable offerings came from filmmakers who looked no farther than their own backyards for inspiration.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
02-20-2009 |
Movies
We're Just Not That Into Drew Barrymore's Latestnew
Greg Behrendt’s know-it-all bossiness may work for a putative self-help handbook, but it doesn’t set quite the right tone for a chick flick aimed at a generation of females who, whether they know it or not, have been sufficiently empowered by the women’s movement to want to direct their own lives.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
02-13-2009 |
Reviews
Tom Tykwer Zings 'The International'new
What, might you ask, is the cause of all this cloak-and-dagger skullduggery? Well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to bore you.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
02-13-2009 |
Reviews
The Sundance Experiencenew
If the highs weren’t as high as those of some Sundances past — no radical, out-of-left-field debut features or eight-figure sales deals to write home about — neither were the lows as dispiritingly low.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
01-30-2009 |
Movies
Tags: Sundance Film Festival
Couscous de Coeur: 'The Secret of the Grain'new
The French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche is that rare thing at the movies these days: an intelligent humanist.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
01-30-2009 |
Reviews
Sundance's Best So Farnew
Push, Cold Souls, and Paper Heart are reviewed. The color ain't purple.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
01-23-2009 |
Movies
Michelle Williams Finds a Safe Haven With Outsider Director Kelly Reichardtnew
It's a rare bankable star who lends her name to a tiny project budgeted at $300,000 and shot over 18 days with a mostly volunteer crew by a director whose name, had Williams bothered to ask permission from her agents, would doubtless have inspired the response "Who?"
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
12-19-2008 |
Profiles & Interviews
Will Smith Encores His 'Pursuit of Happyness'new
Watching Smith and Muccino's latest collaboration, Seven Pounds, I marveled (to paraphrase the great Jermaine Jackson) that something so right could go so wrong.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
12-19-2008 |
Reviews
'The Class': To Sir, With Attitudenew
French cinema is famously dialogue-heavy, but next to Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale, The Class qualifies hands down as the chattiest movie of the year.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
12-19-2008 |
Reviews
Clint Eastwood, America's Directornew
"You've made the first movie of the Obama generation!" exclaimed an audience member, as he rushed up to Clint Eastwood after a recent screening of Gran Torino. "Well," the 78-year-old actor-director replied, without missing a beat, "I was actually born under Hoover."
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
12-19-2008 |
Profiles & Interviews
Tags: Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino
The Long and (Oscar-) Worthy Road to Redemption of 'The Reader'new
Like Doubt, Stephen Daldry's The Reader is low-budget, high-profile and beamed straight at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Category of High Moral Tone.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
12-12-2008 |
Reviews
Clint Eastwood Finds Salvation in 'Gran Torino'new
Above all, Gran Torino feels like a summation of everything he represents as a filmmaker and a movie star, and perhaps also a farewell.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
12-12-2008 |
Reviews
Tags: Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino
