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As an intense documentary that sticks close to a platoon of soldiers in Afghanistan, Armadillo offers easy comparisons to Restrepo, but filmmaker Janus Metz's shrewdly and artfully crafted examination of wartime behavior (which Aaron Hillis wrote about briefly here) proves a grander epic with more cinematic ambitions. For a new GC podcast, Aaron chatted with Metz about shooting beautiful images in the middle of a firefight, what scared him most during filming, and why it's crazy to want to "be all you can be." Read more >> |
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In This Dispatch:
- What's New: King's Speech, Cul De Sac, and much more.
- What We're Watching: Rabbit Hole, Kes, Heartless.
- Explore: ActionFest.
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Merely the Oscar winner for Best Picture, Director, Lead Actor ( Colin Firth, stellar), and Original Screenplay, this is "a superior historical drama and a powerful personal one" ( Roger Ebert). "A direct and heartfelt piece of work," writes Stephanie Zacharek. "It's conventional, maybe, in its sense of filmmaking decorum, but extraordinary in the way it cuts to the core of human frustration and feelings of inadequacy, reminding us how universal those feelings are. " |
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Garrett Scott's doc explores the chilling true-life story of Shawn Nelson, a plumber who went on a rampage in suburban San Diego. "It's been ages since I've seen a more thoughtful, unpredictable, and gripping movie," writes Peter Rainer in Christian Science Monitor. "It's an engrossing true-life story. More important, it's a brilliant cultural and political essay, packed with insights into grassroots attitudes about violence and war." Adds Independent Film & Video: "Truly extraordinary... a chilling X-ray of the despair in poor white suburbia." |
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It takes a lot to ask an audience to sit through a "dead child" movie, but Rabbit Hole avoids showing the buildup and actual death of the child; it begins more rationally about eight months after the car accident. Now, heartbroken parents Becca (an Oscar-nominated Nicole Kidman) and Howie ( Aaron Eckhart) try as hard as they can, every day, to exist. The normally more subversive director John Cameron Mitchell ( Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus) delivers this grim material with a certain amount of grace, and the best I can say for it is that he makes the film often quite compelling... Read more >> |
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Poor 15 year-old Billy Caspar. His father is gone, his mother is distant, his brother is a bullying lush, and his schoolmaster has dubbed him inconsequential, another disposable member of "the generation that never listens." All that awaits Billy is to fail high school and join his peers at the coal mine that functions as the only industry in a depressed Yorkshire hamlet. But on one of Billy's frequent wanderings through the surrounding woods and farmlands, he discovers a young kestrel. He trains the bird and, in the process, discovers a purpose outside of the brutal determinism governing his working class milieu...With Kes, Ken Loach rose to the forefront of visionary, British social realist directors... Read more >> |
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Philip Ridley is back to theatrical movie-making after nearly fifteen years. In Heartless, he's come up with something so strange and frightening, marvelous and moving, apocalyptic and chilling -- and perhaps undecipherable (but you probably won't mind) -- that all I can say is: See it. (I’ve just seen it for a second time, and, yes, it’s still undecipherable, though I may be getting closer.) The man who made the cult movie The Reflecting Skin (sadly not on DVD) and who wrote The Krays (also not on DVD) is an artist, and I don't think that it's so much that he won't compromise his vision, as it is that he can't. Just as well, too -- when one’s visions are this original... Read more >>
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On GC Daily: What once were vices now are habits. Spreading like a brain-sucking virus, the gonzo contagion known as le cinema fantastique has rowdied on down into a peculiar Southern variation called ActionFest. Other film fests honor great auteurs. ActionFest champions the pyrotechnics coordinators, the fight choreographers, and other unsung soldiers who make the movies go boom. Steve Dollar has More >>
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