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Take Seven
For the second straight year, I was fortunate enough to be invited to participate in The Village Voice‘s annual Film Critics Poll. Below, you’ll find links both to my ballot – which lists my “bests” of the year – as well as the comments section of the poll that features a quick remark from yours…
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Cry_Wolf (2005): C
For its surprising first twenty minutes, Cry_Wolf exhibits a self-reflexive desire to address the teen slasher film’s penchant for simplistic misdirection and tedious serial killer construction via the use of predetermined criteria (weapon and disguise of choice, quirky modus operandi, etc.). After such a tantalizing opening, however, it becomes just what it was beginning to…
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Syriana (2005): C
Didactic and muddled to the point of incoherence, Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana is a two hour-plus lecture on the corruption of the American oil industry so wrapped up in its own Byzantine narrative logic that one quickly finds it near-impossible to make heads or tails of who’s who, who’s doing what and for what reason, and…
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La Petite Jérusalem (2005): B
In a concrete housing block outside Paris populated by both Jews and Muslims, eighteen-year-old Laura (Fanny Valette) rebels against the religiosity of her devout sister Mathilde (Elsa Zylberstein) and Tunisian-born mother (Sonia Tahar) by adhering to a Kantian worldview. This opposition between reason and faith, however, only proves temporary in La Petite Jérusalem, as Karin…
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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005): C
Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) returns to Hogwarts for his fourth year in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, an installment that’s as gawky and shallow as its gangly-looking early-teen protagonists. Truncating sizeable chunks of J.K. Rowling’s enormous tome to accommodate its 157-minute running time, director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) appropriates the dark…
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Holiday Batch
With the holidays keeping me busy, I nearly forgot to post links to reviews of many recent and upcoming films, including Spielberg’s latest. Enjoy! In Theaters: Munich (Slant magazine) Rumor Has It (Slant magazine) Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (Slant magazine) Fun with Dick and Jane (Slant magazine) Coming Soon: Looking for Comedy in the…
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Top Ten 2005, Part I
With another twelve months of movie-watching over, it’s time for top ten lists. The first of my End-of-Year features is now up at Slant magazine, and details what I – as well as my editor Ed Gonzalez – thought were the finest and lousiest films of the year. And as with the 2004 edition, I…
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The Doom Generation (1995): C
Littered with pop culture references and celebrity cameos, and assuming a laughable attitude of hipster vulgarity, Greg Araki’s The Doom Generation self-consciously strives for transgressive nihilism without ever recognizing the sheer absurdity of its every component. Bitchy Amy (Rose McGowan) and brain-dead boyfriend Jordan (James Duval, doing a third-rate Keanu Reeves impersonation) are disaffected teens…
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Tropical Malady (2004): A-
Divided evenly into two distinct – yet thematically harmonious – halves, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady is as stylistically striking as it is adventurous. Sculpted with a delicacy that amplifies its mood of tentative romanticism and mysterious passion, Weerasethakul’s intimate love story begins with attractive soldier Keng’s (Banlop Lomnoi) courtship of reticent country boy Tong (Sakda…
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Forty Shades of Blue (2005): B+
As with his debut The Delta, writer/director Ira Sachs’ Forty Shades of Blue proves preoccupied with characters who are both socially and emotionally estranged from their Southern surroundings. Sachs’ reserved film details the morose travails of Laura (Dina Korzun), the Russian-born girlfriend of record producer Alan James (Rip Torn), a lousy father to Laura’s young…
