Tonight I attended a screening that will join the ranks of my all-time greatest film festival memories. At 9pm tonight, I took my seat in the Isabel Bader for the premiere of BODY OF WAR (* * * *) a great new anti-war doc about Tomas Young, a young soldier back from combat in Iraq.…
Reaction: ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
Fair warning: These two reaction posts will deal very little with the actual plot of the films, since I have a lot to get to at this wicked-late hour… Back in May, I first saw the amazing trailer for Julie Taymor’s ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (* * *). From that moment, I knew I had to…
Reaction: LARS AND THE REAL GIRL
Tonight brought out the third standing ovation I’ve been witness to…and, yes I’ll go there again, the second potential Oscar nomination. Tonight, The Ryerson was packed for the premiere of LARS AND THE REAL GIRL (* * * *). Wonderfully directed by Craig Gillespie, the film is about Lars (Ryan Gosling) – a very sweet,…
Reaction: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
I’m not sure what I expected coming into NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. It’s directed by The Coen Brothers, but they’ve been on a bum streak lately (neither INTOLLERABLE CRUELTY nor THE LADYKILLERS did much for me). It’s based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, but I thought the adaptation of ALL THE PRETTY HORSES…
Reaction: HERE IS WHAT IS
There are two types of “Rock Docs”: the linear and the creative. The linear is by far the most popular – soundbites and interviews stitched with still images of album covers and chords of greatest hits (for example THE USA VS JOHN LENNON). Then there is the creative – the type of film where the…
Reaction: LUST, CAUTION
Confession time: when you are so tired that you fall asleep on the couch – and don’t even remember getting into bed, you probably shouldn’t start the next day with a slow-simmering foreign film. I’m not going to actually rate LUST, CAUTION in this reaction piece…but there are a few things I can tell you…
Reaction: JUNO
I will catch up before the day ends…I will catch up before the day ends… Sorry – just having a Stuart Smalley moment here, at least this reaction will get yesterday’s experiences over and done with. So the last movie of the night was JUNO (****), the latest film by director Jason Reitman. Reitman’s THANK…