On "Frozen"

From The Dispatch:

It’s also perhaps one of Disney’s most beautiful films. The design of Elsa’s icy powers is absolutely breathtaking, and the Broadway ready songs are some of the most memorable since their impressive successes of the 1990's, when “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King,” and “Aladdin” all brought Disney out their doldrums of the 1980's.

Click here to read my full review.

On "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"

From The Dispatch:

It is a thoughtful blockbuster, a young adult film with a heart and a brain, and it's also a crackerjack sequel that is a perfect set-up for its two-part sequel, "Mockingjay." Fans will be begging for more while series newcomers will find themselves pleasantly surprised by a film that doesn't pander. It is a blockbuster worthy of its hype.

Click here to read my full review.

On "12 Years a Slave"

From The Dispatch:

“12 Years a Slave” almost seems like a never ending parade of human atrocities, and indeed it is almost unrelenting in its depiction of perhaps the darkest period of American history. It is brutal, unblinking, unsparing, almost to the point of being oppressive. But therein lies its brilliance. Northup went on to write the book on which the film is based, but for those 12 years had no respite from the cruelty of his plight, and so McQueen in turn allows his audience no room to breathe, even when he finds beauty in the turning of a riverboat wheel or the slow spread of blackberry juice on a dirty metal plate. The effect is painful, jarring, and ultimately heartbreaking.

Click here to read my full review.

On "Blue is the Warmest Color"

From The Dispatch:

You can feel the heat radiating off this thing, and the passion between Adéle and Emma is almost tangible. But it’s that strong undercurrent of emotion that makes the film so extraordinary. “Blue is the Warmest Color” is an incisive look at the burning fire of first love, and the ache and devastation of its fading.

Click here to read my full review.

Blu-ray Review | "City Lights"

There are few screen romances as beautiful and timeless as Charlie Chaplin's legendary City Lights.

Made in 1931, City Lights is sometimes referred to as Chaplin's final silent film, although it did use sound effects to comedic effect, and 1936's Modern Times was essentially a silent film as well. Sound film was in its infancy when Chaplin began work on City Lights in 1928 (Chaplin was a perfectionist with notoriously long shooting schedules). Having begun his career as a pantomime artist, Chaplin refused to give into pressure to change his methodology, even as the public embraced the new technology.

For his part, Chaplin sniffed at the new cinematic frontier, even going so far to as to satirize it in the opening scene of City Lights, where self important city officials pontificate from a podium, accompanied my droning nonsense noises simulating speech. To Chaplin, a consummate physical comedian, words were unnecessary, and here he deftly demonstrates why.

Chaplin's "Little Tramp" character had been well established by 1931, having been a cinematic staple throughout the teens and twenties. The character had certainly evolved over time, from something expressly comedic to a mix of comedy and sentimentality, not necessarily something audiences were willing to accept at the time. But audiences embraced Chaplin all the way, even as the sound era threatened to make him irrelevant, and other silent comedians like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd fell by the wayside.

City Lights is both an uproarious comedy and a tender romance, in which Chaplin's Tramp finds himself mistaken for a millionaire when he climbs through a limousine by a lovely, blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill). He is immediately smitten with her, and buys a flower from her. But when the limosuine's owner returns and drives away, she thinks he has left her. But he remains behind, watching from a distance. And continues to find reasons to bump into her. The ruse of his identity, however, becomes harder and harder to continue, as the Tramp sets about trying to find money to help her keep her small apartment before she is evicted, leading to increasingly wild circumstances and one of the most beautiful denouements in the history of cinema.

In fact, that final moment, when the flower girl, able to see for the first time, realizes that the Tramp in front of her is really the man who has been taking care of her all along, is perhaps the image that Chaplin remains the most famous for. That look of guileless glee in his eyes as she sees him for the first time is pure movie magic, and perfectly sums up what has made Chaplin so appealing for generations of movie goers. Chaplin had an innate ability  to mix deep emotions with bawdy slapstick comedy. Whereas Keaton had a more cynical edge to his work (although I still believe Keaton's The General is the greatest silent comedy), Chaplin's were more sentimental, and in that regard, more balanced. They took audiences on a journey, the comedy stemming from our investment in the protagonist's plight rather from the technical skill of the gags, something at which Keaton consistently excelled.

It is no wonder, then, that City Lights is often regarded as Chaplin's masterpiece. It is perhaps the quintessential Chaplin film, with images that have come to define modern audiences perceptions of him. It is magical film, as brilliant and majestic as the city lights from which it gleans its title. The Criterion Collection, having already released The Great Dictator, Modern Times, The Gold Rush, and Monsieur Verdoux, has pulled out all the stops for their release of his most iconic work. One of the company's first dual format releases, combining both Blu-ray and DVD, City Lights features a wealth of supplemental materials that are all available on both discs, including archival behind-the-scenes footage (which is of particular interest for Chaplin fans), and a documentary called "Chaplin Today: 'City Lights,'" which follows Chaplin's methods with Wallace & Gromit creator Peter Lord. This is Criterion's most essential Chaplin release yet, and one of the top Blu-ray releases of the year - a fitting tribute to one of the greatest comedies, and the greatest films, of all time.

GRADE - ★★★★ (out of four)

Now available on dual format Blu-ray and DVD from The Criterion Collection.

On "Captain Phillips"

From The Dispatch:

It's an urgent, riveting look at a post-9/11 world where our enemy no longer has a face. The pirates continually insist to the Navy that they are "not al-Qaida," as if that is some sort of signal that they mean no harm and shouldn't be treated as hostile. What they are, however, is the product of an unfamiliar and increasingly volatile world. Greengrass explores this new world of enemies, in this case, four armed teenagers who managed to cause a standoff with three American warships. 

Click here to read my full review.

Review | "Wadjda"

Haifaa Al Mansour's Wadjda is a landmark film for myriad reasons; not only is it the first film ever completely shot in Saudi Arabia, where cinemas are banned, it was also directed by a woman.

Living under strict Sharia law, women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to be seen or even heard by men, and Al Mansour often had to direct street scenes via walkie talkie while hiding in a van. That makes Wadjda the most bravely defiant film of the year, even more so than the petulant and childish Escape From Tomorrow, which was covertly filmed in Disney World without permission.

Unlike that film, Wadjda means something, carrying a much greater cultural significance. It is an unassuming film, a charming tale of a young Saudi girl who simply dreams of having a bicycle.

From left to right: Waad Mohammed as Wadjda and Abdullrahman Al Gohani as Abdullah
Photo by Tobias Kownatzki © Razor Film, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

We know young Wadjda (Waad Mohammed) is different right from the start. Instead of the conservative black shoes the other girls in her school wear under their hijabs, she wears Chuck Taylors, and surreptitiously sells football trading cards under the teacher's noses. On her way home one day, she has a run in with Abdullah, the young neighbor boy, whom she beats at a foot race after he swipes her sandwich. When he returns with a bicycle and makes off with her headscarf, Wadjda becomes determined to get a bicycle of her own to show him up.

Bicycles, however, are not something a respectable Saudi woman should have, her mother tells her. So she must find other ways of achieving her dream. When the school religious club announces a Koran contest, Wadjda decides to join up to win the prize money and buy the bike herself. Thrilled that she seems to be turning over a new leaf, the school's stern headmistress welcomes her with open arms, and all the while Wadjda is forging a secret friendship with Abdullah and plotting to finally buy the bike of her dreams.

Waad Mohammed as Wadjda
Photo by Tobias Kownatzki © Razor Film, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Wadjda doesn't feel like a work of activism, nothing about it suggests it is the revolutionary work that it actually is. It is a gentle act of defiance, a film about women by women in a country that completely devalues female worth, where women are only objects for men to control. That makes Wadjda something kind of radical, a quiet rebuke of repressive religious values that make no sense in a modern world. It seems odd somehow that such a simple, endearing film could be so subversive, and coming from anywhere else in the world it might not seem so, but as a Saudi film, by a woman no less, Wadjda represents something extraordinary indeed.

On its own, the film is a lovely story, a film about individual perseverance in the face of repression. But in the larger context it becomes something much greater because of what it represents. Al Mansour directs with a remarkable sensitivity, and young Mohammed is an exceptional and charismatic find. Their courageousness has given us something truly special - a beautifully modest act of rebellion that stands up to its country's patriarchal society simply by existing rather than preaching. And that makes Wadjda one of the most important films of 2013.

GRADE - ★★★ (out of four)

WADJDA | Directed by Haifaa Al Mansour | Stars Waad Mohammed, Reem Abdullah, Abdullrahman al Gohani, Ahd | Rated PG for thematic elements, brief mild language and smoking | In Arabic w/English subtitles | Now playing in select theaters. Opens today, 10/25, at the Manor Twin in Charlotte, NC.

Blu-ray Review | "The Hitch-Hiker"

While perhaps best known for her acting career, which included roles in such films as The Sea Wolf, High Sierra, and The Man I Love, as well as television appearances on shows like The Twilight Zone and Barnaby Jones, Ida Lupino is perhaps most notable for being the only widely viewed female director of the 1950's.

In fact her work as a director, which she cultivated while on contract suspension by Warner Brothers for stubbornly refusing Bette Davis' hand-me-down roles, is perhaps even more accomplished than her acting career. Besides directing countless TV episodes of Gilligan's Island, Bewitched, The Twilight Zone, and The Fugitive, Lupino also helmed the feature films like On Dangerous Ground (for which she didn't receive credit) and The Bigamist.

It would be hard to argue, however, against her best film being The Hitch-Hiker (1953), a feverish, 70 minute nightmare about two unsuspecting travelers (Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy) who pick up a murderous fugitive (William Talman) who has left a string of dead motorists in his wake. The film has that unmistakable 1950's ripped-from-the-headlines sensationalism about it, and was indeed inspired by an actual event. But Lupino directs with a sparse, pared down style that emphasizes suspense over the usual social warnings of such films. At a little over an hour, the film moves at a breakneck pace, but never feels rushed or frenetic. It's a taut, tense thriller that makes the most out of its film noir atmosphere and simple, horrific concept.

In fact the concept was so horrific for the time that major studios refused to film it, paving the way for Lupino and her screenwriting partner/ex-husband Collier Young to work with blacklisted screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring. 

There have been plenty of hitchhiker movies since The Hitch-Hiker, from Hitch-Hike starring Rutger Hauer, to The Hitcher and its subsequent remake, but none of them have quite tapped into that primal fear of "this could happen to anyone" quite like this one. The Blu-ray release by Kino Lorber may be bare bones, but it certainly looks great, and credit must be awarded for restoring and releasing this all but forgotten genre classic. It's a lean, mean, nasty piece of work that deserves to be rediscovered.

GRADE - ★★★ (out of four)

Now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Kino Classics.

Review | "Escape from Tomorrow"

You are not likely to see a more ballsy film released in 2013 than Randy Moore's Escape From Tomorrow.

By all accounts it is a film that shouldn't even exist. Filmed on location at Walt Disney World without permission from the Disney company, Escape From Tomorrow is an outright act of defiance, a shot-on-the-fly, guerrilla style assault on one of America's most iconic sacred cows. After making a splash at this year's Sundance Film Festival, there were many who wondered if it would even be released at all.

There is a lot to be said for its sheer chutzpa, unfortunately big balls alone do not a great film make. Once you get past the initial shock of seeing such an edgy film shot in Disney World, complete with demonic automatons in "It's a Small World," Disney Princess hookers, and naked evil queens seducing horny dads, there just really isn't much there.

The film centers around a typical American family on vacation at Walt Disney World in Orlando Florida. Everything seems normal - a mom, a dad, two cherubic children - the absolute picture of the American dream. But the dad, Jim (Roy Abramsohn), has just found out that he has lost his job, and chooses not to tell his wife so as not to ruin their vacation. The news weighs hard on him, however, and he finds it hard to concentrate as a dark pall has suddenly been cast over the idyllic vacation. That's when he spots two young French Lolita's on the monorail headed to the Magic Kingdom, and finds himself becoming increasingly lost in a fantasy world of his own devising.

As rifts begin to form in his perfect family unit, Jim obsessively follows the girls around the park, and suddenly the Happiest Place on Earth takes on a much darker form. Happy go lucky children's rides no longer seem like safe havens of childhood dreams, but sinister representations of corporate evil. As Jim gets closer and closer to the truth behind these eerie visions, he finds himself disappearing down a rabbit hole of madness from which there might be no escape.

Moore is clearly going for a sort of David Lynch brand of surrealism as he builds his Disney-fied nightmare, but the film feels more like a random nonsensical mess bordering on Dada than anything resembling surrealism. The fact that not all of the scenes were actually filmed at Disney World, but in front of a very obvious green screen only hampers the film's strange verisimilitude. There is so much potential here for an actual critique of consumerist culture, and Disney is a huge target, but Moore seems to have wasted a golden opportunity on something that feels like a cheap student film.

The idea is certainly there, but it never goes that extra step to transcend the shock factor for which it so clearly strives. There some striking images to be found here, and Abel Korzeniowski's lush score is one of the year's best, but the film itself is something of a slow motion train wreck. Escape From Tomorrow is a film full of promise that never delivers. A messy, unfocused conglomeration of concepts that is hampered not only by the limitations under which it was shot, but by its fatal lack of cohesion. It's a surreal world when you really think about it, where people dress up like movie characters and dreams seemingly come to life in what is essentially an elaborate lie. But what does that say about us and our culture? I don't know, and I'm not sure Escape from Tomorrow does either. It never asks those questions, content instead to shock the audience by raising its proverbial middle finger at a legendary brand that prides itself at being squeaky clean. And rather than winning some decisive philosophical victory, the film comes off looking like a child saying a curse word in church just to see people gasp rather than a serious work of art with something relevant to say.

GRADE - ★ (out of four)

ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW | Directed by Randy Moore | Stars Roy Abramsohn, Elena Schuber, Katelynn Rodriguez, Jack Dalton, Danielle Safady | Not rated | Opens tomorrow, 10/11, in select cities and on VOD.

Review | "A Touch of Sin"

It's always amazing how much information director Jia Zhang-Ke can fit into his expansive mid shots, his subjects dwarfed by towering mountains or sky scrapers as if they are going to be swallowed up by their oversized surroundings - in this case, a China that has become much too big and unwieldy for its own good.

The title of A Touch of Sin is a somewhat ironic play off of King Hu's 1971 film, A Touch of Zen, but the world Jia depicts is a long way from Zen. Here we are introduced to four different people living in modern day China, each feeling overwhelmed, abused, or otherwise trapped in a world of corruption and sin, and each in their own way resort to violence to regain their dignity. There's a disgruntled miner, frustrated that money once promised to the workers has gone to the corporate bigwigs through bribes and underhanded deals. There's a migrant worker drifting by the Yangtze River who finds newfound pleasure in owning a gun. There's an adulterous receptionist who is taken advantage of by an unruly client, and finally a young factory worker who jumps from job to job, never quite able to fit in.

Zhao Tao as Xiao Yu in A TOUCH OF SIN, a film by Jia Zhang-Ke.
Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Each one finds themselves caught in their own personal hell, overwhelmed by a China that has grown so exponentially that it has lost its own identity. The Chinese economic boom has increased the wealth gap to the point that it has changed the very landscape of the country, as Jia has so memorably chronicled in films like Still Life and 24 City. Jia is, perhaps, the foremost chronicler of modern Chinese life, which is impressive considering the amount of control the government often exercises over its film makers. Jia's China is one of great economic process, but plagued by cultural rot lurking just beneath the surface. As the rich get richer off of unfair dealings, the rest are being increasingly left behind, victims of unfair circumstances from which they cannot escape, to the point that violence seems the only solution.

But Jia isn't just holding a mirror up to his own country, he's holding a mirror up to America as well. There's something startlingly universal about A Touch of Sin that should give us all pause to reflect on why this all seems so familiar. The world of the film doesn't seem so foreign, which is troubling in and of itself. In an America where violence is commonplace and mass shootings are the norm  rather than the exception, what does this film say about us? What have we as a society created when violence has become so ingrained in our culture?

Jiang Wu as Dahai in A TOUCH OF SIN, a film by Jia Zhang-Ke.
Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

The violence in A Touch of Sin isn't pretty or glamorous. It's shocking, brutal, and difficult to watch. Jia uses it sparingly, so when the tension finally snaps it's like a punch in the gut. This is a deeply felt meditation on violence, its nature, its roots, its consequences. While the film's four vignettes don't really connect much beyond their common theme (all four incidents are based on real occurrences), and some are more compelling that others, but they add up to a powerful whole. The first segment could have made an excellent standalone film on its own, but when grouped with the other three tales, it becomes something more - a portrait of a dying culture, lost and floundering in a new and modern world. And when Jia turns the camera on the audience in the film's final moments and asks "do you understand your sin?" we forget we're watching a foreign film about a distant country, suddenly it becomes deeply personal. Jia hits us where it hurts, and it's impossible to look away.

GRADE - ★★★½ (out of four)

A TOUCH OF SIN | Directed by Jia Zhang Ke | Stars Jiang Wu, Zhao Tao, Wang Baogiang, Luo Lanshan | In Mandarin w/English subtitles | Now playing in select cities.

On "Gravity"

From The Dispatch:

Rarely does the big screen see such powerful exercises in pure cinema. Cuarón is a visionary director, and here he unleashes all of his skill to deliver one of the most awe inspiring entertainments to come along in years. It is a film that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible, one where the price of the 3D upgrade is actually worth it. This is the kind of film for which 3D was made, and lest anyone think this is just a throwaway piece of sci-fi fluff, Sandra Bullock delivers the performance of her career, adding emotional heft to the jaw dropping special effects. 

Click here to read my full review.

On "Rush"

From The Dispatch:

It's bland and unmemorable where it should be fresh and exhilarating, and despite some fine period design and nifty cinematography, it just never establishes a clear personality or perspective, and for a film about racing, being dull is about as damning a trait as there can possibly be.

Click here to read my full review.

On "Prisoners"

From The Dispatch:

The film exists in a world of "what ifs," what if I'm wrong, what if I'm right, never really giving us the payoff or release we might expect in a film of its type. This isn't "Taken," where bloody vengeance is taken against the girl's captors to cheers from the audience, this is something far more thoughtful. It's "Taken" with the pacing and sensibilities of David Fincher's "Zodiac."

Click here to read my full review.

Theatre Review | "Wait Until Dark" @ Triad Stage

Are you afraid of the dark?

The folks at Triad Stage in Greensboro are hoping that the answer is "yes" as they kick of their 13th season with Frederick Knott's Wait Until Dark.

Dubbed "the lucky season," this year Triad will feature performances of such wide-ranging fare as Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie, Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, the musical Pump Boys and Dinettes, as well as new plays The Mountaintop and Snow Queen.

If the season opener is any indication, we're in for a fantastic year of theatre in downtown Greensboro. Audiences may already be familiar with the story of Wait Until Dark through the 1967 film adaptation starring Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin, but you haven't truly experienced Knott's story until you've experienced it up close and personal.

Mickey Solis, Laurence Lau, Rob Kahn and Cheryl Koski.
Photo by VanderVeen Photographers.

The senses play a huge role in this tale of Susy Hendrix (Cheryl Koski), a blind woman who accidentally and unwittingly comes into possession of a doll filled with heroin. Three dangerous con men want the doll, and they want it badly. One in particular, Mr. Roat (Laurence Lau), is a seasoned gangster who plays the other two into his own sadistic game. Determined to get the doll for themselves, the three concoct an elaborate plot to fool Susy into giving up the doll. But as Susy begins to get wise to their game, they are forced to take a more drastic approach, leaving Susy defenseless against their scheme. Or is she? Suddenly on her home turf, the con men find themselves locked in a battle of wits against a woman who lives her life in darkness, and where your most valued senses can't be trusted.

Director Preston Lane uses all the theatrical techniques at his disposal to ratchet up the tension to a shattering climax played out in a pitch black theater. The use of lighting by Norman Coates, even at its most bare minimum, is absolutely stunning, accentuating the importance of the play's excellent and wickedly effective sound design by Jonathan Fredette. The play is a true sensory experience, reminding us how we often take our senses for granted until we are deprived of them. Thrust right into the middle of the action, the audience becomes a part of Susy's ordeal, which makes it all the more suspenseful. It doesn't hurt that Koski's performance is so devastatingly believable; an appealing mix of sprightly charm and emotional heft. Pitted against Lau's coolly detestable villain, along with a more sympathetic Mike Talman (Mickey Solis) and his somewhat bumbling cohort, Carlino (Rob Kahn), Koski shines amid an enormously talented cast.

Whereas most theatrical productions emphasize what you see, Wait Until Dark often deprives us of that which we often take for granted, giving the audience a wholly unique and terrifying experience. There's something almost cinematic, even Hitchcockian, about its marriage of sound and visuals to tell a story, allowing the audience to see that which the protagonist cannot. But when we are all plunged into darkness and placed in her shoes, it makes for some truly thrilling theatre.

Wait Until Dark runs from Sept. 6 through Sept. 22. For more information or to purchase tickets visit www.triadstage.org, or call the box office at 336.272.0160.

On "The Grandmaster"

From The Dispatch:

While Wilson Yip's "Ip Man" films are excellent in their own right, "The Grandmaster" is a more lyrical, perhaps even more abstract take with a much different focus. It is an intoxicating exploration of love and honor, and Wong's finest film since his 2001 masterpiece, "In the Mood for Love." This is cinema on a grand scale. 

Click here to read my full review.