A film that should have gotten much more attention than it did, Tim Disney’s fictionalized account of the real-life prosecution of innocent people in the name of numbers is a damning portrait of the collateralContinue reading
Category: U.S. Independent Cinema
The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)
Another of the small-budget “experimental” films Soderbergh likes to squeeze in between his prestige Hollywood efforts. While there is much to commend in a filmmaker of his stature still desiring to work on the edges,Continue reading
Che (Steven Soderbergh, 2008)
Soderbergh’s ambitious bifurcated chronicle of the two major military campaigns of the iconic guerilla leader is the most ambitious (and divisive) historical epic since Oliver Stone’s JFK. Anchored by Benicio Del Toro’s subtle but powerfulContinue reading
World’s Greatest Dad (Bobcat Goldthwait, 2009)
The Bobcat’s third outing as writer/director (and the first of his films seen by me) starts out as a caustic examination of a sad-sack single dad’s attempt to connect with his utterly perverse adolescent sonContinue reading
Lost in La Mancha (Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe, 2002)
Poor Terry Gilliam. I don’t know what he’d do if he were ever involved in a film project wasn’t mired in either crisis or catastrophe. Fulton and Pepe’s examination of his aborted dream project—a cinematicContinue reading
Big Fan (Robert Siegel, 2009)
A dark portrait of the escape of modern sports fandom taken to potentially frightening (and violent) extremes, Siegel’s directorial debut has much in common with his script for The Wrestler, particularly the close attention itContinue reading
Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire (Lee Daniels, 2009)
A powerful and moving portrait of the horrors of poverty, abuse, and neglect that also offers compelling insight into the divided views of how race should be portrayed. The film makes no bones about itsContinue reading
Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, 2007/2009)
Stephen King once wrote that making horror is a lot like martial arts: finding vulnerable points and pressing, which is a perfect description of what this ultra-low-budget but extraordinarily clever film about a demonic hauntingContinue reading
The September Issue (R.J. Cutler, 2009)
There is no getting around the fact that fashion is a $300-billion-a-year global industry that largely defines, on some level, what virtually everyone in the industrialized world puts on his or her back, and IContinue reading
Homicide (David Mamet, 1991)
Mamet’s third film as a director is one of his strangest and most compelling. Although it starts off quite conventionally as a police thriller, it gradually and then aggressively morphs into a psychodrama about aContinue reading