In 10 Words or Less
A look back at the inglorious days of high school

The Movie
Every time I watch another movie or TV show about life in high school, it makes me wonder if I attended some sort of idyllic paradise of education or if society has crumbled to the point where high school is akin to a stint in prison. In my school, the most popular kids were in the honors program AND sports teams, and no one seemed to have a miserable time (outside of a select few who were doomed no matter their forced location for most of the day....Read the entire review

Based on the acclaimed graphic novels by Joann Sfar, The Rabbi's Cat is an animated adventure into the culture and climate of 1930s Algeria, as seen through the eyes of a sarcastic talking cat. Although the inclination might be to compare the film to Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and the film version directed by Satrapi and Vincent Parronaud, The Rabbi's Cat has its own distinctly different yet equally dazzling style of animation that really evokes an older comic book come to life. Although the film's episodic nature and lack of focus prevent it from soaring, Sfar and co-director Antoine Delesvaux have crafted a number of memorable characters and made a visually stunning picture.

Among residents of the city, The Cat (Fran ois Morel) is a familiar fixture on the shoulder of The Rabbi (Maurice B nichou). The Cat actually belongs to The Rabbi's daughter, Zlabya (Karina Testa)...Read the entire review

Digimon (DigitalMonsters) received a lot ofnegative responses when it first premiered on US airwaves, at leastfrom thosewho didn't tune in to see the premiere. The series appeared to benothing morethan a cheap Pokemon derivative atfirst sight and many people were probably convinced they could...Read the entire review

Digimon isone of the best children's animeseries around and it's one of those rare series that won the hearts ofchildrenand has managed to stay just as meaningful and well-made for thataudience overthe many years since the original incarnation of the show wascompleted. Thiscreative and energetic anime focuses on a group of kids (known asDigiDestined)who have become intertwined in th...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Directed by Rick Alverson in 2012, The Comedy features Tim Heidecker as a thirty-five year old hipster/slacker type named Swanson. It opens with a scene where he and his friends are drunk and naked and spitting their drinks out of their mouths and just generally making a mess of things. It's here that viewers should realize that The Comedy is not really a comedy at all. When next we meet Swanson, he's sitting in a room with his terminally ill father. As he sips his whiskey he insults the intern dealing with more unpleasant side of home care - he insults him, noting that he's being paid to deal with his father's bowel movements and that he probably doesn't always get everything out from under his nails when he washes his hands and what if he picked something out of his teeth that day? He'd get it in his mouth. This scene sets the stage for what's to come and pret...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Meta horror came back hard last year thanks to the release of long-delayed The Cabin in the Woods, which turned out to be a successful, wink-wink genre-baiting thrill ride. Self-aware horror films are nothing new. There is Wes Craven's New Nightmare, which ushered in a genre renaissance on the back of Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

So Yong Kim has been one of my favorite emerging directors. Over the last six years, she has made three features. The first two, In Between Days and Treeless Mountain, shook off the artificial "mumblecore" tag to reveal an emotionally powerful, carefully expressed cinematic point of view. Her latest, For Ellen, is my least favorite of her efforts, but not because it lacks the same sincerity. It's more because Kim has stretched herself and ventured out into, for her, uncharted terrain, and perhaps just hasn't entirely found her way around as of yet.

Paul Dano (Read the entire review

The Film:

In 10 Words or Less
Save the princess, crack some jokes

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Cult comedy, old video games
Likes: Felicia Day, The Guild
Dislikes: Most web series
Hates: Cheesy production values

The Show
I don't watch a lot of web series, for the simple fact that there's a ton of really good content pumped through that big screen in my living room (and yes, I know I can watch web shows on that big screen, but until my DVR can record off YouTube, old-school television will remain my primary dealer.) The web series I do watch either feature people I adore, come highly recommended by people I trust or are about things I really like. Thus I was a longtime viewer of Felicia Day's great MMO comedy Th...Read the entire review

Side by Side doesn't seek to crown a victor. The question isn't whether or not CCD chips are superior to celluloid, though the documentary does explore both sides of the digital vs. film arguments. The fact of the

[click on the thumbnail to enlarge]

m...Read the entire review

Review:

"Red Vs. Blue" is an internet series that is filmed using the "Halo" video games (and as the sequels of the original game have improved graphically, so has "Red Vs. Blue".) While the series has improved technically over the seasons (thanks to technical improvements in the sequels and the use of additional effects), the writing was outstanding from the outset and has improved further in the years since, as the series has added richer plots and surprisingly effective moments of drama.

Of course, there's also the occasional action sequence, although the humor of much of the series (especially the original run of 100 episodes) is that two separate groups supposed to be fighting each other rarely fight and when they do, they do so quite unsuccessfully. The voice acting is also top-notch, giving the characters personalities strong enough to more than overcome the fact that the ...Read the entire review

The Movie

Note: the screen captures accompanying this review are taken from the DVD edition of Tales of the Night.

A visually dazzling animated film from French writer-director Michel Ocelot, Tales of the Night explores the enduring appeal of classic verbal storytelling - the kind your mom employed to tuck you into bed (do moms even do that anymore?). The six short tales that comprise Tales are enacted in vibrant CGI, set in exotic lands, and told entirely in silhouette. If the varied segments tend to be hit-and-miss in content, the film's bold, inventive look gives it a consistency that places it alongside other recent acclaimed animated flicks such as Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Irish import Citadel is a stripped down thriller set in a crumbling inner-city slum. A young husband watches in horror as a band of juvenile hoodlums attacks his pregnant wife. She is killed, and the man is left alone with his infant daughter to battle intense depression and agoraphobia. Citadel is inspired by Director Ciaran Foy's own run-in with some misguided youths, and the film's troupe of feral bastards makes for a compelling villain. Citadel is horror stripped to its stu...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

It's tough to have to write a lukewarm review for a film like "They Call It Myanmar: Lifting the Curtain." The 86-minute documentary is a labor of love and sheer humanity from director Robert H. Lieberman. Filmed over the course of two-years, in extremely secret fashion in many instances (for reasons the documentary addresses almost immediately), the film provides a raw look at Burma, a country engaged in a decades long struggle with brutal dictators. Lieberman lets the camera tell the story whenever possible and relies on those brave enough to speak to him (many with their faces hidden, for fear of political reprisal) about life in general in the country. The result is initially fascinating, but quickly tedious experience.

At it's worst, "They Call It Myanmar" feels like a poorly edited, directionless cable news segment, but when it's on-point, it can be simultaneous...Read the entire review

"History in 3D" is a boxed set comprised of 3 discs which are also available separately.

The first disc is "WWII in 3D", which is a short (44 minutes) but very fascinating look at 3D still and motion picture photography during World War II. Narrated by Tom Wilkinson, he tells how the Nazis used 3D for many of their propaganda photos. Adolph Hitler had commissioned photographer Heinrich Hoffmann to carefully photograph him in what the narrator calls "a God-like stature".

These photos are in black and white, but their depth rivals the quality of anything shot in 3D recently. As those who have been familiar with 3D for a long time know, an early way of viewing 3D pictures was through a "stereoscope", a viewer with lenses that could view cards with the left a...Read the entire review

An extremely mild if humanist portrait of a hulking, semiliterate man and his warm relationship with a 95-year-old widow he meets in a park, My Afternoons with Margueritte (La t te en friche, or "The Uncultivated Mind," 2010) plays like a Lifetime Channel TV-movie. The English title even recalls Tuesdays with Morrie, the book and later TV-movie that starred Jack Lemmon in one of his last roles.

Presumably the presence of star G rard Depardieu bumped this up to theatrical feature status. Nevertheless, it's cut from the same cloth as movies like The Bucket List (2010), if not nearly as bad as that film, although My Afternoons with Margueritte is unintentionally funny at times.

A Cohen Media Group/New Video release, the Blu-ray is up to contemporary standards in terms of picture and sound. Extras i...Read the entire review

Note: images are publicity stills and do not reflect the picture quality of the Blu-ray under review.

The Movie:

If you've ever asked yourself questions like "How did toothbrushes ever go from straight to angled?" or "Why does my potato peeler have a chunky handle?" or "Why did they make the iPhone look more like an Apple product than an old-style telephone?", the probing documentary Objectified will suit your needs. The film serves as a nice primer on what makes the industrial design profession tick. More importantly, it demonstrates that a lot of thought goes into the making of every object we use.

First released in 2009, Objectified served as the middle child in director-producer ...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

"The Giant Mechanical Man" is a movie that I groan to think of; written and directed by Lee Kirk and starring Jenna Fischer (Kirk's wife) and Chris Messina, "The Giant Mechanical Man" is one of those trite films that is best described as "inoffensive" merely for the fact that while it has nothing of real value to say to the audience apart from broad platitudes and broad clich s, in all other categories it's a well-made film that is reasonably well acted. The film follows Janice (Fischer) a generally un-ambitious, single woman floating from temp job to temp job; through classic, quirky exposition, she meets Tim (Messina), a street performer who has just broken up with his snobbish girlfriend. Naturally, this means romance between the two will follow, occurring as the two meet again (Janice doesn't know Tim is the titular character that Tim portrays) as newly hired employees at...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Plenty of action movies promise non-stop thrills but Sleepless Night is one of the few that actually delivers. Director Fr d ric Jardin's film is an unyielding shot of adrenaline that simply can't be denied. It goes and goes and just when a lesser film would have paused for a breather, it takes off like a rocket.

As the film opens, we hit the ground running with Vincent (Tomer Sisley) and Manuel (Laurent Stocker) who steal a duffel bag filled with cocaine from a couple of thugs. Unfortunately, things get messy in a hurry when Manuel gets trigger happy. In the ensuing commotion, one of the thugs is killed and the other escapes but not before getting a good look at Vincent's face. This is going to be a problem because Vincent and Manuel are actually cops...dirty ones, but cops nonetheless. The heist comes back to haunt Vincent in a big way when his son (Samy Seghir...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

The oh-so-hot-right-now found footage subgenre of horror takes a voyeuristic turn with writer/director Randall Cole's 388 Arletta Avenue. A shift in perspective is a key factor in one's appreciation of what Cole and his crew are trying to do here. We've seen plenty of horror movies that feature protagonists who suffer from an inability to put down their video cameras even as terrible things are happening to them and their loved ones. Very rarely (if ever) do we get one where the footage is from the perspective of the antagonist. 388 Arletta Avenue fills that vacuum by tormenting an unassuming couple for the enjoyment of an unseen voyeur (and us of course...we do like to watch...don't we?).

James (Nick Stahl) and his wife Amy (Mia Kirshner) are under surveillance. Someone in a van has been watching them go about their lives, making note of their habit...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

I very much enjoyed The Woman in the Fifth, director Pawel Pawlikowski's long-delayed followup to his accomplished, fascinating My Summer of Love (2004). But some caution is in order before I go claiming that every viewer will be as drawn in as I was: I tend to be very forgiving about whether or not the events depicted in a film make any kind of logical or rational sense, or whether or not every enigma is settled by the end, and though many are willing to acknowledge that the ultimate inscrutability of a classic like The Big Sleep is actually an important element of its endless appeal and fascination, the same tolerance seems less widespread for even more un-...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Before, during and after sex

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Good indie comedies, Jason Mantzoukas
Likes: Julie Bowen, supercast movies
Dislikes: Hollywood endings
Hates: How true much of this movie is

The Movie
I was going to lead off this review by feigning confusing Conception with the Christopher Nolan mind-bender Inception, but once I started writing it, and tried to come up with something to compare to the spinning totem, it felt like a long way to go for too little pay-off. However, I would love to see a Funny or Die trailer for Christopher Nolan's Conception.

Conception from Josh Stolberg (writer of Good Luck Chuck and Piranha) is not mind-bendi...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Tony Kaye's pro-teacher drama Detachment certainly strikes at something pertinent to the times we live in. Barely a week out from the first Presidential debate in the 2012 election, where Barack Obama laid out his desire to hire a megaton of new teachers to get the U.S. educational system back on track, it's hard to say if the American History X director's film makes for an argument in the President's favor or a warning to those who might join his legion to get the hell out while they can.

Detachment stars Adrien Brody as Henry Barthes, a long-term substitute teacher who has just landed a month-long job at an inner city school. It's an academy with a lot of history, the building clearly dates back many decades, but its interior...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

The cat is Zoe's best friend. He is her companion, her nuzzler and buddy, and she needs one--her father, a police officer, was recently killed, and her mother, a police supervisor, is so wrapped up in the case to find his killer that she can barely bothered to pay attention to her daughter, who hasn't uttered a word in the months since. So, as you can see, she really needs that cat. And the cat is loyal and faithful until Zoe drifts off to slumberland, at which time the cat leaps out the window and goes to its other owner, Nico, a cat burglar (coincidentally enough). Nico leaps across the rooftops of Paris and steals jewels, and you get no prize for guessing that the cat's two very separate lives are going to intersect.

A Cat in Paris is a delightful little animated caper from France (where it was originally titled Une vie de chat), and a movie that wouldn...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

The first on-screen text in Kirby Dick's The Invisible War informs us that all of the film's statistics come from government sources. They are, to put it mildly, shocking. Over 20% of female vets have been sexually assaulted while serving our country. 200,000 assaults and rapes had been reported by 1991--and that was twenty years ago, and that only counts how many were reported. Fifteen percent of incoming Navy recruits entered the service with a previous history of sexual assault or rape; that's twice the rate as among civilian population. It is an environment, Dick contends, that can attract a sexual predator--and that is set up to not only excuse the perpetrator, but to punish the victim. Most of the latter are discharged; most of the former are not. The Department of Defense knows it is a problem, and makes bold statements about "zero tolerance" policies. Bu...Read the entire review

Spain's Chico &Rita is a collaborative filmmaking effort from directors TonoErrando,Javier Mariscal, and Ferando Trueba. Trueba is the filmmaker with themostprevious experience under his belt: He's a previous winner of the awardfor BestForeign Language Film from the Academy Awards for The Ageof Beauty (1992). Chico & Rita is a combination ofromance, jazz music (including some animated "cameos" by famous jazzlegends),and the culture history of 1940's Cuba. Chico& Rita is a dramatic animated film aimed at adults with ani...Read the entire review

I'm the parent of a two year old, and as everyone out there who's ever had a child can probably relate, the televisions in our home have seemingly switched ownership. Instead of baseball, football, or reruns of Family Guy and Seinfeld, my wife and I have been inundated with the likes of Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Octonauts, Chuggington, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Curious George, and the list goes on. To be perfectly honest, I enjoy a fair amount of the programming my son has fallen in love with, but most of these shows just aren't very educational. Sure, there's some implementation of problem solving, counting, reading, and lessons regarding right and wrong, but it's all done at a minimal level. With the exception of Sid the Science Kid and Super Why, I feel these shows have served more as entertainment than edutainment. At the same ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Ballet documentary Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance is a comprehensive, enjoyable film that seems a little too in awe of its main subjects to truly let loose and fly. The film uses a ton of archival clips and eyewitness accounts in documenting the history of the Joffrey Ballet, a ragtag, defiantly American troupe that has continually challenged the classical notion of dance with original choreography and daring revivals since its humble beginnings in the '50s.

Not knowing much about ballet or recent dance movements, Joffrey's tangled up-and-down saga of collapses, rebirths, spellbinding successes and weird misfires came as a somewhat unexpected surprise. The troupe was founded in 1956 by Robert Joffrey and his then-lover, the lesser-known b...Read the entire review

The Film:
There was a time when Harry Belafonte was one of the biggest, most revered, and important entertainers in America, and the world. There was no realm of entertainment he had not conquered, and from there he moved into the realm of political activism. He worked side-by-side with Dr. Martin Luther King, and was crucial in recruiting other entertainers in his many political causes. Remember the USA for Africa movement in the 1980s that helped battle famine and resulted in the mega-hit song "We are the World"? Yeah, well, Belafonte was one of the key driving forces in that whole thing. He also was an active and vocal participant in the protest to end apartheid in South Africa. Basically, in addition of dominating the charts and winning awards, Harry Belafonte spent much of his adult life on the front lines in the battles for human rights globally.

Susanne Rostock's documentary Sing...Read the entire review

The Film:

Most of us expect cinema to be habitually kinetic, whether it is a narrative hurtling forth into the (hopeful) unknown or a pace that is sometimes tense or unrelenting. Sitting down to watch Tran Anh Hung's adaptation of Haruki Murakami's internationally renowned novel, one isn't sure what to expect. Having never poured over the novel, this writer walked into the film in the dark, and boy does he regret it - met with a meandering bit of arthouse cinema, his hopes withered at the forty-five minute mark. Tran Anh Hung, directing his second film after a nine year sabbatical, elects to tell Murakami's almost deceptively simplistic (or maybe just plain simple) story through punishing long takes that, while undoubtedly beautifully composed by hugely talented cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bin, keep the film at an uncomfortable distance.

Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" is ostensibly the story ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The feature film directorial debut of renowned actor Vincent D'Onofrio was shot between projects and on a low budget basically with what he had around him at the time - a few musicians, a big backyard full of woods, and a small crew. The results are Don't Go In The Woods, a film that has nothing to do whatsoever with the 1981 backwoods slasher cult film of the same name - in fact, this 2010 picture is, of all things, a horror musical. Still there? Okay...

When the movie begins a guy named Nick (Matt Sbeglia) and his bandmates - Carlo (Jorgen Jorgensen), Johnny (Soomin Lee), Anton (Casey Smith) and Robbie (Nick Thorp) - are jammin' out a song about their love for another man on the way to the woods. Why are they jammin' out a song about their love for another man? Because that man is Jesus, and loving is his game. This more or less sets the stage for what's to come. ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

With Something's Gonna Live, filmmaker Daniel Raim explores the work and life of legendary production designer Robert Boyle (North By Northwest, The Birds) in a continuation from his Oscar-nominated 2000 short, The Man on Lincoln's Nose. While that earlier film was a celebration of a brilliant craftsman, this feature takes on a much more contemplative tone. It follows Boyle as, approaching the century mark in age, he reaches out to his few remaining contemporaries in the film crafting field and grimly reflects upon the massive profits-over-artistry changes that have gripped Hollywood over the years.

The film is actually a bit like three mini-documentaries strung together. The first part opens with grand shots of the massive cemetery that overlooks the movie and TV studios in Burbank, California, as an unseen speaker expounds that film professionals are ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Fashion is a fickle little minx that will seduce with glitter and glamour, flatter your ego, then kick you to the curb and laugh derisively while your bloody nose drips into the gutter. At least that's the message I divined from Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston, a documentary that examines the life of the man whose stunningly simple fashions served as both a visual hallmark of the disco-era and a harbinger of the fuss-free outfits we all enjoy to this day. While the film explores Halston's brilliance as a designer decently enough, director Whitney Sudler-Smith is too invested in making the film a personal statement - the journey of a jaded hipster seduced by the hedonistic aura of the '70s - to step aside and let his subject speak for himself.

Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston is framed by Sudler-Smith's own impressions of the designer - he appears on camera throughou...Read the entire review

The Film:
Some people get ridiculously bent out of shapes when American versions of foreign films get made. Sure, it seems silly that some people won't watch a movie because it has subtitles. I've always laughed at anyone who says, "I watch movies to watch movies, not read 'em." At the same time, I'm amused by those who exist on the opposite end of the spectrum, screaming of the purity of foreign films, and the blasphemous nature of Americanized remakes, produced solely--or at least seemingly solely--for the troglodyte audiences that hate to read subtitles. I play the neutral stance of Switzerland in this matter. I love Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and I also love John Sturges's The Magnificent Seven. I thought Fabian Bielinsky's Nine Queens was a great movie, while Gregory Jacobs's American remake Criminal was not nearly as good, but was still entertaining. Luc ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

A "double hour" occurs when the hour is the same as the minutes on the clock. So, for instance, the first time it appears in the movie of the same name, when it's 23:23 (I guess Italians are on the 24-hour system). If you happen to look at your watch as this occurs, you get to make a wish, like you would if you caught sight of a falling star. Or so Guido tells Sonia after they meet at a speed dating event. "Does it work?" she asks. His answer is an emphatic "No."

First-time director Giuseppe Capotondi and a trio of screenwriters have crafted their own Double Hour, a crime story full of dualities, second chances, and wishful fantasies. Guido (Filippo Timi, The American) is...Read the entire review