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Interview:
Kier-La Janisse. Montreal-based film critic and programmer Kier-La
Janisse explores how her own life as an adopted child with disruptive
behavioral issues is intricately wired to a particular strain of
cinephilia in "House of
Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in
Horror and Exploitation Films" (FAB Press; $29.99).
On one level, Janisse offers a spirited, incisive, and refreshingly
plain-spoken analysis of movies that range from widely discussed
auteurist psychodramas ( 3
Women,
The Devils,
Audition,
Antichrist)
to more furtive enthusiasms of the sort once tucked away in the back
corner of the kind of video stores where she once worked.
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In
This Dispatch:
- What's
New: ParaNorman, Burning in the Sun, and more.
- What
We're Watching: Lawless.
- Explore:
RETRO ACTIVE: Red Dawn.
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The
boy sees dead people, but it's not the twist at the end, the ghosts are
this outsider's friends in this film from the same production studio as
Coraline.
Manohla
Dargis calls it
"beautiful-looking, charmingly heartfelt," also noting "the
meticulously detailed pictorial beauty, which turns each scene into an
occasion for discovery and sometimes delight." Physical
sets and puppets along with new
3D Printing technology were utilized instead of the typical use of CGI.
The LA Time's Betsy
Sharkey adds, "the style of film
itself evokes a kind of pop-up book fairy tale quality that beckons you
inside" |
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The
fact that the 26 year-old man profiled in this doc (Daniel Dembele) can
build solar panels from scrap is powerful and surprising enough, but
the film inspires more conversation than that, says Film-Forward.
"Director Cambria Matlow found in Mali a young man whose personal story
and drive to succeed so parallels Barack Obama’s that the
film’s sociological insights almost outweigh the
accomplishment of bringing cheap electricity to poor villages." TrustMovies,
who has been following the film since it was a 20
minute short, agrees, calling
it “Riveting…the ramifications are
extraordinary.” |
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"Ungh."
Every time Tom
Hardy grunts in Lawless,
it's a Rick Ross-level
event, a laconic warning from a hard man not to be messed with on any
account. It's 1931, and Forrest Bondurant (Hardy) is a bootlegger
prospering in Franklin County, Virginia. Affluence is relative: in the
middle of gross poverty, the obdurate Bondurant brothers are a few cuts
above because they own a roadside diner/bar and drive long distances to
sell moonshine, paying the police as they must. The arrival of "lawman"
Charley Rakes ( Guy
Pearce) poses a problem, since
the Chicago transplant wants a bigger cut than proud Forrest will agree
to. Proud rural brothers vs. corrupt urban cop, game on. Read
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[This
week's "Retro Active" pick is inspired by the North Korean-centric
remake Red Dawn.] Of all the places to invade America,
Colorado—cutoff from any reasonable air or naval
support—would seem a pretty terrible choice. But don't tell
that to Red
Dawn,
John
Milius' eminently ridiculous
time capsule of Cold War paranoia and teenybopper play-acting, which
finds small-town Colorado overrun by Russian and Cuban soldiers.
Read
more >>
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Nunsploitation
Podcasts!
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