For one, it comes a little too close to the voyeurism of “slum tours” to me. Of course, I myself am a bit torn about this since photojournalism and documentary photography, crudely put, often partake in this kind of dynamic. most photographers and filmmakers try to justify, at least to themselves, their actions with some [...]

Someone please tell me what the point of this movie is. If it’s meant to be satirical, which it is in spades, couldn’t it have been more LOL funny like SNL? If it’s meant to be some kind of historical political biopic, then all i can say is too soon, too soon. The gags, the [...]

I haven’t watched too many Oshima films but judging from Etsuraku (I really dig his style, especially the cinematography. There’s just something about the film stock that they used over there in the 1960s – plus Oshima loves nothing more than a dark and moody palette where faces and body parts are outlined in a [...]

Ugh. Roger Ebert thought this movie was shit and I am inclined to agree … it’s too bad, since in some way, the biker western genre is fascinating to me, if only because I have had so little exposure to this piece of Americana. The movie is written and directed by Larry Bishop, who was [...]

Manohla Dargis of the New York Times thought that this film was a bit hokey because it takes the issue of mental health and makes something Capra-esque out of it. Lars was abandoned and abused when he was young and finds it difficult to connect with other human beings, to the extent that he ends [...]

Is there any reason why Woody Allen should continue subjecting us to these morality tales? If you want to see the Abel and Cain-esque moral fallout that happens when two brothers once so close get in over their heads, you’d be better off watching “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” with Ethan Hawke and Philip [...]

This was certainly one of the more thought-provoking films that I’ve seen in awhile. Made in a sort of magical realist style, the film tells the story of an aging Romanian professor Dominic Matei (Tim Roth) who miraculously becomes rejuvenated after being struck by lightning.
The backdrop of the film is [...]

So it looks more serious than I had thought…still you wonder what the fuck people are protesting about. Chinese people are really oversensitive, I mean Kungfu Panda is not much different than Mulan or anything of that sort…I don’t know why they are protesting all of the sudden. Of course, with the earthquake, everyone is [...]

So, as one might expect, there are some calls from people on the web to boycott the movie Kungfu Panda, an animated film about a panda that learns kung-fu and saves the day. First off, I’m not 100 percent sure whether this is purely an expression of popular sentiment or an official pronouncement, but according [...]

I had high hopes or this movie because its directed by Erick Zonca, who made The Dreamlife of Angels, a poetic and gritty film that I watched around the time
that it came out. Back then, being in my early 20s and not having that many movies under my belt, the film made a deep [...]