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In This Dispatch:
- What's New: Lorna's Silence, Cloudy, and (a little) more.
- What We're Watching: Trucker, Headless Woman, Miss Mend.
- Explore: New Year's Resolutions.
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The latest by Belgian filmmakers the Dardenne brothers is the acclaimed tale about a woman caught between love and the law of the underworld. The LA Times' Kevin Thomas calls it "a gritty, deceptively low-key, no-fuss, no-frills movie of consistent originality and surprise in which suspense arises straight up from the heroine's evolving character." Adds A.O. Scott: "Lorna's Silence is engrossing and powerful, which may be just another way of saying it's a film by the Dardenne brothers." |
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This fun, funny CGI-toon kind of got lost in the shadows of the other bigger animated films in '09 but even the notoriously picky Mark Kermode of the BBC liked it. The LA Weekly's Ernest Hardy found it "smart, insightful on a host of relationship dynamics, and filled with fast-paced action." Adds Keith Phipps: "It’s a brisk, bright, winning effort, even though it already looks sadly out of touch with the times." A fine voice cast includes Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, and Bruce Campbell. |
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The title suggests decapitation and the poster, an infinitely tousled coif atop a silhouette in profile, suggests the opposite, an overabundance of cranium, if you will. The Headless Woman is nothing that these signifiers suggest, yet they couldn't be more appropriate. That's the trick of Lucrecia Martel's fascinating, if enigmatic film: nothing much seems to happen during it's 86 minute runtime, and yet a great deal happens. ... Read more >> |
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If you've ever watched Battleship Potemkin (1925), you might wonder what the original audiences for the film might have been like. Sure, there were a lot of art-aware Americans who saw it on these shores, but what did the Russians think of it? Were they offended? Cheering in the aisles? It turns out that the seats were rather empty. Instead, citizens shelled out their hard-earned rubles to see another film, Miss Mend, directed by Fedor Ozep and Boris Barnet. Critics and the cultural elite sneered at the film, not only because it was a pure entertainment with no redeeming social value, but because.. Read review >> |
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On GreenCine Daily, Aaron Hillis "thought it might be fun to ask fellow members of the film community to share their own pledges for 2010, and was excited that less than 24 hours' notice yielded responses from over 40 filmmakers, critics, distributors, publicists, and other noteworthy voices... let's shake things up in the new year." Read more >>
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