Richard Curtis, the phenomenally successful screenwriter of “Notting Hill,” “Love Actually,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” makes movies that are the cinema equivalent of Paul McCartney’s pop hit “Silly Love Songs.” Curtis would be fine with that description; at an HBO Director’s Dialogue recently at … [Read More]
“The Square,” by Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim, is an exhilarating cinéma vérité portrait of the chaotic and inspiring events as they unfolded in Tahrir Square beginning in 2011 to overthrown Hosni Mubarak and moving beyond that to the ongoing, current political situation. “The Square,” which is included in … [Read More]
The glittery 51st edition of the New York Film Festival kicked off Friday night with the world premiere of Paul Greengrass’s “Captain Phillips” starring Tom Hanks. “Captain Phillips” is a powerful edge-of-your-seat docudrama based on the real-life story of the kidnapping by four Somali pirates of the Maersk Alabama … [Read More]
Ethan and Joel Coen’s new film, “Inside Llewyn Davis,” follows a week in the life of a folk singer, Llewyn Davis, a dour young man with a guitar (and sometimes an orange cat), who struggles to make it in the 1961 West Village club scene and who’s destined to … [Read More]
[springboard type=”video” id=”796287″ player=”tmbg001″ width=”599″ height=”336″ ] This uncompromising excursion into American Gothic is not for the faint-hearted. Adapted from a 1973 Cormac McCarthy novel, the action is set in rural Tennessee in the early 1960s. Lester (Scott Haze), an unstable, childlike man, is evicted from his farm. He … [Read More]
The character study of a young high-school teacher who has a meltdown after she begins a hot-and-heavy sexual relationship with one of her teenage students is the subject of “A Teacher,” the feature-film debut of 27-year-old director Hannah Fidell. Lindsay Burdge, who appears in nearly every scene of the film, … [Read More]
Ashton Kutcher was still channeling Steve Jobs at the Teen Choice awards last Sunday. The “Jobs” star, the recipient of the Ultimate Choice award, extolled values he credited to the Apple co-founder. (Josh Gads, who plays a sympathetic and sensitive Steve Wozniak in the biopic, presented Kutcher with the award.) … [Read More]
Pedro Almodóvar, Spain’s greatest living director, showed up at the Crosby Hotel in SoHo recently to promote his new film “I’m So Excited!” a sex farce that’s a throwback to his 1980’s comedies like “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” “What Have I Done to Deserve … [Read More]
“The East” is a savvy, sexy environmental espionage thriller by director/writer Zal Batmanglij that stars the charismatic Brit Marling, who is also the co-writer. Marling portrays Sarah, an ace undercover agent who infiltrates The East, an “eco-terrorist” group that lives off the land and strikes back – in actions … [Read More]
Julianne Moore stars in “What Maisie Knew,” a drama directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel (“Uncertainty,” “The Deep End”) about a six-year-old caught in the middle of a bitter custody dispute between a narcissistic rock star (Moore), and her jerky ex-husband (Steven Coogan), an art dealer who disappears … [Read More]
Robert Redford directs and also stars in the political suspense thriller, “The Company You Keep,” his first starring role since “An Unfinished Life” in 2005. Last Monday, Redford, Jackie Evancho, Stanley Tucci and Brit Marling, appeared at a press conference at the Parker Meridien Hotel to talk about their … [Read More]
“The Place Beyond the Pines,” Derek Cianfrance’s eagerly awaited follow-up to “Blue Valentine,” is an intimate story about fate and doomed relationships, and fatherhood and legacy, captured with heartbreaking rawness and candor. Cianfrance was at the Waldorf-Astoria recently for the film’s junket where he talked about teaming up … [Read More]