I wish I could write the way Nicole Holofcener writes. I wish I could write the way she directs too. It’s sometimes difficult to articulate the feelings and motivations of her characters in Please Give — they contain layers of often contradictory emotions — but they elicit our immediate empathy. There is a scene, and [...]

The Stoning of Soraya M. begins with a quote: “Don’t act like a hypocrite, who thinks he can conceal his wiles while loudly quoting the Koran;” and then proceeds to explore a situation in which the Koran becomes little more than a tool to oppress and punish. It is a film with a strong point [...]

Director Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s book Where the Wild Things Are is subdued and beautiful, intelligent about the emotions of a boy from a broken home but clear and direct in expressing them. It features sublime cinematography by Lance Acord and production design by K.K. Barrett, who create a visual landscape that [...]

What is it that makes us human? What is it that makes each of us unique? Sophie Barthe’s Cold Souls takes on this heavy subject in a mind-bending and very meta story constructed with a lot of dark, subtle humour. Paul Giamatti, one of the most reliable actors working today, takes the lead, treating viewers [...]

Truth, justice, and the American way. These are the wholesome ideals in which the Superman mythology has its roots, which must have made it doubly traumatic for fans when George Reeves, the man who played Superman on TV in the 1950s, was said to have committed suicide. Allen Coulter’s Hollywoodland takes the mystery surrounding Reeves’ [...]

The experience of watching A Serious Man I can only describe as an ordeal. I sat squirming in my chair, fidgeting, and then finally thrashing — yes, thrashing — in frustration. It instilled a claustrophobia that made me want to claw out of my skin.
Is it a bad movie? I think our first question should [...]

Directed by Joe Johnston and adapted from the 1941 film starring Lon Chaney Jr., The Wolfman is a film caught between the gothic beauty of old fashioned horror films and the glossy CGI favoured by so many films today. It’s captivating when it leans towards the former, but when it gives in to the latter [...]

Shutter Island was shuffled from an intended fall 2009 release date to February 2010, which changed its profile from Oscar-season prestige picture to a late-winter thriller with low expectations (a studio delaying a film is often a sign of a lack of confidence), but it has proven to be a sound business decision; though the [...]

“Even the music makes me want to kill myself,” said a man a few rows down from me during the closing credits. I laughed; sometimes someone just says it all.
But being depressing is only one of the problems with A Single Man, helmed by fashion designer-turned-director Tom Ford. Watching it, you can see that Ford [...]

What if you had a passion for doing something you were terrible at? Would you make it your life’s work regardless, or would you shove The Dream down under a pile of Get Real? Most people would do the latter. “When I grow up I want to…” says everybody, but hardly anybody actually grows up [...]