Director James Marsh’s third film reveals to us the passion and the obsession of one man’s quest to skywalk between both World Trade Towers in 1974. “Man On Wire” takes the viewer into the mindset of French performance artist Philippe Petit whose electric personality fueled his determination to do what had not been done before. First discovering the creation of the towers in France, Petit became enamored with the idea of one day traversing 1000 feet above the ground across the void between both towers. The film skillfully depicts all the players involved in this daring scheme to enter the…
Browsing: Film Reviews
1955. Jean Dujardin alias French Agent 117 aka Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath is the star in “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, as a homage to 007, Inspector Clouseau and even Maxwell Smart along with dash of Austin Powers, you have a very funny, ridiculously wacky movie. Based on the 1949 novels by Jean Bruce, the movie brings to life the debonair yet quirky character of OSS 117. We begin with two OSS agents both 117 and his comrade Jack Jefferson (Philippe Lefebvre) on a airborne mission for which they are herald as heroes of the day. A mishap…
The Band’s Visit is by no means a story of epic proportions. It tells the story of a group of Egyptian musical men stranded for one night in a comically dull Israeli town. These men, bound by their love of music, form the Egyptian police’s Alexandria Ceremonial Orchestra, an enterprise whose weighty title far outshines their actual, minimal importance. Their leader, Tawfiq’s (Sasson Gabai) conduct is as crisp and proper as the starched lines of his immaculate robin’s egg blue uniform. His bearing rivals that of a high ranking military official, prompting those around him to mockingly nickname him “The…
A child’s perspective is at once naïve and pointedly insightful. Their gaze often pierces the layers of pretense that surround matters of politics and religion. Stripping away these outer coverings exposes the core of these issues in a way that renders them both vulnerable and unforgivable. Marjane’s Satrapi’s autobiographical Persepolis is the epitome of this process. Part personal, part national history, the film explores Marjane’s (voiced by Chiara Mastroianni) childhood in an Iran in the midst of violent change that paves the way for a deeply repressive Islamic revolution. Fearing for her safety, Marjane’s parents send her to school in…
Beauty in Trouble is the award winning film by Czech director Jan Hrebejk. The film surprised audiences at festivals around the world with its impressive cinematography, top notch performances, and subtle yet powerful messages on love, loyalty, family, guilt and redemption. The film mixes cinema genres as comedic and dramatic situations help tell the story of a woman who is torn between her personal desires and what is in the best interest of her and her family. The film follows Marcela (Anna Geislerova) a young woman whose family has come into hard times due to the fact that a severe…
Yoko Takeuchi (The Ring), stars in Director Kichitaro Negishi’s new film, “Dog in a Sidecar”, based on the award winning novel by Yu Nagashima. The story centers around a blossoming friendship between an innocent little girl and her father’s rough around the edges mistress. Kana Matsumoto plays the little girl, Kaoru Kondo whose mother (Sawa Suzuki) gets fed up and leaves both her and her younger brother Taro (Takeru Taniyama) to fend for themselves until…Yoko arrives. However, I’m jumping the gun a little, we begin our story with a grown up Kaoru (Mimura) who has a career as a real…
With a visually eye-popping palette, first time director and well known photographer Mika Ninagawa (daughter of famed stage director Yukio Ninagawa), brings her visual style to period piece “Sakuran”. Sakuran is based on a Japanese manga and revolves around the life of courtesans in the 18th century Yoshiwara pleasure district. Kiyoha exudes siren-like mystique (Anna Tsuchiya) as a rough and tumble prostitute, an opinionated spirit who quickly rises to oiran power but not after becoming a student in the school of “hard knocks”. Even as an impudent child, she was equipped with a razor-like tongue laced with harsh obscenities with…
In this new millennium with the young French directors, the French cinema is going into a new renaissance, a cinema that moves away from the classical French-style but embraces a higher degree of authenticity in locations, quick cuts and compelling stories.Today, cinema theory is a very strong factor in the United States with its film critics and the new interest in the theoretical implications of this art form. However, not too long ago, film theory was mainly dominated by the French.After France was occupied by the German army from 1940 to 1944, the masters of cinema like René Clair, Jacques…
The pastime of collecting baseball cards is also the pastime of collecting memories. As a child ages and his collection grows, his cards become associated with a plethora of emotions and experiences. Decades later that child, now an adult, visits his past each time he flips through the well-worn pages of his collection. The need to reconnect to the past is especially urgent for both Matthew Broderick and Alan Alda in their new movie “Diminished Capacity.” Broderick plays Cooper, a once razor-sharp political syndicate at a large Chicago newspaper. He has been temporarily banished to the comic strip pages due…
Adoor Gopalakrishnan, the veteran Malayalam director grew up reading the short stories of T. S. Pillai, one of the towering figures of Malayalam literature, his short stories were a stark portrayal of the society he lived in. Since everything he saw, he felt, he witnessed became a part of his stories. As T.S. Pillai presented the realities of life, as it stood, from the day to day vagrants, to the complexity of social feudalism. Everything in the fictitious world felt just like living and breathing the atmosphere he talked about, and his stories achieved the status quo of social –realism.The…