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In an exclusive piece for GreenCine, critic Eric Kohn takes a look at Mike Judge's new film Extract and considers his body of work as a whole; from Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill, to Office Space and Idiocracy, "Judge has always presented sophisticated takes on human behavior, but he only recently allowed his anti-heroes to take charge." Read more >> |
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In This Dispatch:
- What's New: Homicide, Silent Light, and more.
- What We're Watching: Kabei, Hazard, and Kingdom.
- Explore: Mental Illness on Film, continued.
- Contests: 9; best member lists.
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Arguably less renowned than David Mamet's House of Games, his 1991 cop drama is no less provocative, and Criterion's DVD gives it new life. "The movie crackles with energy and life," wrote Roger Ebert back then, "and with throwaway slang dialogue by Mamet, who takes realistic speech patterns and simplifies them into a kind of hammer-and-nail poetry." Adds DVDTalk: "Takes the police procedural and turns it into one man's personal journey through religion, race, and identity. Joe Mantegna is at his best. [The Criterion DVD] sports a fantastic new transfer and a few well-chosen extras to make an all-around great package." |
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Set among a Mennonite community in Mexico, Carlos Reygadas' slow-moving but extremely rewarding film is "is less about faith than matters of the heart," writes Scott Tobias, "and in Reygadas' hands, the ache is bone-deep." J. Hoberman calls Silent Light "extraordinary. As understated as it is, the movie is both deeply absurd and powerfully affecting." The Chicago Tribune deemed the film "spellbinding." |
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Protesting government policies in 1940 Japan is something you don’t see covered all that often in film. Given Japan’s history as a people both sheep-like (to be fair, most citizenry is) but also ruled by a keen sense of shame, I suspect that this kind of protest did not occur all that frequently. Pressure on the Japanese people to follow the prescribed path is always enormous. In Kabei: Our Mother, the wonderful director Yôji Yamada tackles a very different kind of film: a quiet family saga full of love, pain, hope and sadness. Time has lent enough distance and perspective that we can now watch a film about a WWII Japanese family and experience it from their viewpoint and shared humanity... read review >> |
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Japanese director and avant-garde poet Sion Sono has a reputation for making controversial and provocative films with a goofy touch (for example, one of his less well-received films is a horror flick about cursed hair extensions). Hazard is the first film of his that I've seen, and I found it playfully transgressive and hilarious, entertaining all the way through, if also a little too long. The story is equal parts gritty coming-of-age story, noirish crime spree... read review >> |
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A lovely cast of British comedic character actors raises this cosy series up a notch: those stalwarts include Stephen Fry, Phyllida Law, Tony Slattery and Karl Davies. Fry here plays Peter Kingdom, a Norfolk solicitor who is coping with family, colleagues, and the strange locals who come to him for legal assistance. Even Fry himself says the show "is unashamedly and purposely not a steak, it's a soufflé and even a soufflé should be made of good ingredients." And this show has just that. |
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An action-packed adventure, Shane Acker’s animated fantasy epic 9 is the feature-length expansion of his Academy Award-nominated 2004 short film, and is produced by directors Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov. The stellar voice cast includes Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, Crispin Glover, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly and Martin Landau. It opens Wednesday, 9-9-09 (of course). And now, thanks to GreenCine and Focus Features, you can win our new 9 contest. Details >>
Also: Create a new list via GC member lists this week, and win! The best new list wins a cool DVD from GreenCine! Deadline: Friday (Sept 11). |
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