Unfortunately, I am nowhere near as familiar with the works of Leo Tolstoy as I’d like. I’ve been meaning to read War And Peace for years, but it’s hard to find the time. Thankfully, if nothing else, The Last Station, Michael Hoffman’s film on the final year of Tolstoy’s life, only covers Tolstoy as a […]
Posts by: robertr
Julia
December 11, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Erick Zonca’s Julia is a rare type of film, one that works largely in spite of its own script. Yes, it is twenty minutes too long, needlessly convoluted and it ends poorly, but through a combination of fantastic acting and some beautiful photography, it somehow finds a way to succeed. The film starts Tilda Swinton […]
Bronson
December 11, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I love Death Wish. It’s an all out crazy movie that is reined in just enough so that it doesn’t become complete parody, unlike its infinite iterations. Charles Bronson, the main star of that movie, is sort of crazy in a Wesley Snipes kind of way, except without the whole tax fraud thing. Bronson became […]
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
December 11, 2009 at 1:08 pm
At this point, Werner Herzog stands in rarefied air, in the mix for every discussion of the “greatest living filmmaker,” and almost unquestionably the most influential living European filmmaker after some of the surviving members of the Nouvelle Vague, which made the announcement that he would be directing Nicolas Cage in a sort of-remake of […]
Adapting Life Into Pop Art : Godard’s Made In U.S.A.
December 11, 2009 at 1:06 pm
If there were one film director most analogous to Bob Dylan it would probably be Jean-Luc Godard. Both released an astounding amount of brilliant, medium changing content representative of sixties culture (Godard 18 films, Dylan 9 albums) only to completely shift gears in the 1970s. While Dylan zoned in on the personal and started to […]
Café and Cabaret: Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris & Albrecht Dürer: Virtuoso Printmaker
December 11, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Café and Cabaret: Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris Now through August 8, 2010 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Paris nightlife, with its absinthe-fueled cast of characters, dingy cabarets, and plethora of performers and artists, was not simply the backdrop for Henri Toulouse-Lautrec’s lithographs—it was the main event. In the new print show at the Museum of Fine Arts, […]
2 or 3 Things I Know about Jean Luc Godard
December 11, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Who is she? Who is “Her?” This is the first question that is inevitably asked of Jean-Luc Godard as the title cards repeat the nationally colored words: 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her. Who is “Her?” “Her” is Juliette Janson, a middleclass housewife, working as a prostitute in order to get by. “Her” […]
“The Messenger” Review
December 11, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Maybe it was wrong of me, but for a minute there, I really thought that we would get a second great film dealing with the war in Iraq this year, which would of course bring the total number of great films dealing with the war in Iraq up to two. Unfortunately, The Hurt Locker must […]
“The Road” Review
December 11, 2009 at 12:06 pm
The official trailer for the film The Road scared me more than any horror film released this year. As a fan of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning post-apocalyptic novel, the rapid images of Earth’s demise and destruction intercut with a father and son fighting against the evil villains to survive in this new world are […]
“Fantastic Mr. Fox” Review
December 11, 2009 at 12:03 pm
At some point along the line, we all sort of knew Wes Anderson was going to try to make an animated kid’s movie. The set design and inserts from The Royal Tenebaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou all seemed like pastel throw-ins from Blue’s Clues. All of Anderson’s characters, from Max Fischer down […]