Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Cineaste and More

The new issue of Cineaste is ready to hit stands and included among its pages is my take on the very good, though necessarily problematic, documentary The Interrupters. (The piece is not available online.) My other reviews for the week, linked below, are of lesser degrees of interest.

Love Crime (Slant)
Buttons (Village Voice)
Rebirth (Time Out New York)
Seven Days in Utopia (Time Out New York)

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

An Idiotic Week...

...isn't such a bad thing when the idiot in question is Paul Rudd's character in the new Jesse Peretz film entitled, appropriately enough, Our Idiot Brother. Idiotic in its typical, less positive connotations may not quite describe the rest of the movies I reviewed this week, but it's safe to say that none provide anything close to the pleasure of the Peretz.

Our Idiot Brother
(Slant)
Tales from the Golden Age (Slant)
Chasing Madoff (Village Voice)
The Family Tree (Time Out New York)

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Help, It's Milton Moses Ginsberg

My latest batch of reviews covers not only the dreadful feel-good racial quagmire The Help, but a piece on two intriguing films (screening next week at BAM) by cult director Milton Moses Ginsberg as well as a pair of not entirely unsuccessful new releases.

Sex Games, Werewolves and Nixon: Two by Milton Moses Ginsberg (The L Magazine)
The Help (Slant)
One Day (Slant)
Mozart's Sister (Slant)

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Blood and Guts on the Cinema Screen

There's plenty of blood and guts to be found in the two films I reviewed this week, both substances (literally) in Cold Fish, Shion Sono's gruesome portrait of thwarted masculinity, the second of the two (metaphorically) in Gun Hill Road, Rashaad Ernesto Green's look at growing up transgenedered in a patriarchal Bronx family.

Gun Hill Road
(Slant)
Cold Fish (The L Magazine)