March 22, 2010
A reviewer compared City of God to Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) and many parallels could be made between the two. As they both fall into the genre of gangster films, they depict violence in a raw, uninhibited way, in a realist fashion. City of God, with its documentary-style aesthetic—camera shakes, voice-over narration, etc., uses that realism to emphasize its story’s […]
March 26, 2010
Dan in Real Life is predictable, and its characters rarely venture into unknown territory. It makes for a passable rental, but not much else.
March 29, 2010
WHAT IT IS: Boston: A private investigator is enlisted to find a little girl who’s been abducted in his old neighborhood. HOW IT IS: In his directorial debut, Ben Affleck borrows from many of the great living directors, from Eastwood to Van Sant. Most notable is the latter’s influence in the cinema vérité shots. A Bostonian himself, Affleck’s neighborhood seems […]
March 26, 2010
There Will Be Blood methodically depicts the rise of its fictional character, from his modest entrepreneurial beginnings to rich oil mogul.
April 19, 2010
In The Lookout, after a violent car accident, a promising young man, disabled by a memory condition, is persuaded into robbing the local bank he works in.