My first trip to Pixar’s Emeryville campus was 13 years ago. That alone was enough to give me pause when I was invited to the “Inside Out” press day. I’ve done it. I’ve taken the tour. I’ve seen the campus. I’ve met the artists and I’ve seen their amazing work spaces and I’ve had a chance to walk through pretty much every department. I remember standing outside the server room my first time up, looking in at the brain of this remarkable company, amazed at how those racks of black technology represented this collision of all this amazing human artistry. My other hesitation, honestly, was because we were told that we’d be seeing “part” of the movie. I’ve grown wary over the years of seeing movies in chunks because you can’t really react in any meaningful way since you’re not seeing something that’s complete.
- 5/27/2015
- by Drew McWeeny
- Hitfix
"Forty-one years young, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art's annual New Directors/New Films festival is committed to compiling a slate of artistically diverse films from every corner of the world," writes Ed Gonzalez, introducing Slant's collection of reviews. "Twenty-eight countries represent the 29 feature films (24 narrative, five documentary) and 12 shorts that make up this year's program, which kicks off on March 21 with a screening of Where Do We Go Now?, Nadine Lakaki's follow-up to Caramel, and closes with a special surprise screening that won't be revealed to the audience until it screens at Film Society on Sunday, April 1. Any guesses?"
Not from this corner, though the wish-list runs pretty long. "We weren't planning to do a surprise for New Directors," Richard Peña tells the Fslc's Jonathan Robbins, "but there is a unique situation with this film." As for Nd/Nf as a whole, Peña...
Not from this corner, though the wish-list runs pretty long. "We weren't planning to do a surprise for New Directors," Richard Peña tells the Fslc's Jonathan Robbins, "but there is a unique situation with this film." As for Nd/Nf as a whole, Peña...
- 3/23/2012
- MUBI
L Caldoran at Cinespect on Alice Rohrwacher's debut feature: "Corpo Celeste's heroine, 13-year-old Marta (Yle Vianello), grew up in secular Switzerland and has recently moved to a heavily Catholic town in Italy: naturally, she has difficulty adjusting thanks to the resultant culture clash. Though she enjoys a close bond with her overworked single mom, she also endures the constant haranguing of her older sister while at home. Already a quiet, shy girl, she's often little more than a silent observer in her new community: her inner life is closely guarded, frequently even from the viewer."
"But the film breezes past standard short-story-isms to focus on a non-hysterical portrait of people dealing with the widening gap between their attachment to religion as a social anchor and increasing skepticism about its value or relevance," writes Vadim Rizov at GreenCine Daily. "Twitchily shot by director Alice Rohrwacher and veteran Dp Hélène Louvart,...
"But the film breezes past standard short-story-isms to focus on a non-hysterical portrait of people dealing with the widening gap between their attachment to religion as a social anchor and increasing skepticism about its value or relevance," writes Vadim Rizov at GreenCine Daily. "Twitchily shot by director Alice Rohrwacher and veteran Dp Hélène Louvart,...
- 10/4/2011
- MUBI
Not even Moneyball could beat The Lion King 3D at the box office this weekend, as Anthony D'Alessandro reports, but it's for Moneyball that we've got a roundup rolling on and on beyond all reason. IndieWIRE's Peter Knegt notes that "the specialty box office had a clear winner in Weekend," and we've got a roundup on that one as well.
"Wholly unrelated to the 1975 Sam Peckinpah film of the same name, Killer Elite is distinguished by one no-mercy, eye-gouging, testicle-punching brawl, and one whoppingly indifferent screenplay," writes Nick Pinkerton in the Voice. A quick sketch from Time Out Chicago's AA Dowd: Jason Statham "plays an ex-special-ops agent yanked out of retirement when someone kidnaps his mentor (Robert De Niro, in the Liam Neeson role). The guilty party, a deposed dictator with a chip on his shoulder, wants our erstwhile Transporter to knock off a trio of British mercenaries. 'I'm done with killing,...
"Wholly unrelated to the 1975 Sam Peckinpah film of the same name, Killer Elite is distinguished by one no-mercy, eye-gouging, testicle-punching brawl, and one whoppingly indifferent screenplay," writes Nick Pinkerton in the Voice. A quick sketch from Time Out Chicago's AA Dowd: Jason Statham "plays an ex-special-ops agent yanked out of retirement when someone kidnaps his mentor (Robert De Niro, in the Liam Neeson role). The guilty party, a deposed dictator with a chip on his shoulder, wants our erstwhile Transporter to knock off a trio of British mercenaries. 'I'm done with killing,...
- 9/25/2011
- MUBI
Vera Farmiga's Higher Ground "admirably tries, on a minuscule budget, to evoke the spirit of American cinema from 35 years ago: the age of Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall, an era much more hospitable to serious roles for women than the current one." Melissa Anderson in the Voice: "As reported in a New York Times Magazine cover story on the actress in 2006 (three years before her Oscar-nominated performance in Up in the Air), Farmiga has expressed her disgust with the roles offered her by setting scripts on fire: 'I stack up all those crass female characters, all those utterly ordinary women, all those hundreds and hundreds of parts that have no substance or meaning and turn them into a blazing pyre.' It's a shame, then, that Higher Ground never really ignites."
Farmiga plays "Corinne, a Midwest rural woman who embraces a hippie-inflected but paternalistic evangelical community with her high...
Farmiga plays "Corinne, a Midwest rural woman who embraces a hippie-inflected but paternalistic evangelical community with her high...
- 8/26/2011
- MUBI
"Cars 2, directed (like several great Pixar films of the last two decades) by John Lasseter, finds itself in the unlucky position of the not-so-bright kid in a brilliant family," finds Slate's Dana Stevens. "No matter if his performance in school is comfortably average; he'll always be seen as a disappointment compared to his stellar siblings. There's nothing really objectionable about Cars 2, although parents of young children should be warned that a few evil vehicles meet violently inauspicious ends. It's sweet-spirited, visually delightful (if aurally cacophonous), and it will make for a pleasant enough family afternoon at the movies. But we've come to expect so much more than mere pleasantness from Pixar that Cars 2 feels almost like a betrayal."
Nick Schager for the Voice: "Pixar's Cars franchise takes a sharp turn from Nascar mayhem and rural red-state-targeted 50s nostalgia to 007 espionage with this upgraded sequel, though in its...
Nick Schager for the Voice: "Pixar's Cars franchise takes a sharp turn from Nascar mayhem and rural red-state-targeted 50s nostalgia to 007 espionage with this upgraded sequel, though in its...
- 6/25/2011
- MUBI
"With his Bud Cort haircut and morbid sensibility, Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is too smart for Swansea, Wales, an industrial city mired in some seriously mid-80s Thatcherite doldrums," begins Vadim Rizov at GreenCine Daily. "The trouble with Oliver is that he knows he's clever, which could justify anything: surreptitiously monitoring his parents' sex life, taunting an overweight girl to make local cutie Jordana (Yasmin Paige) notice him as a real livewire, or trying to trash the house of downhill neighbor Graham Purvis (Paddy Considine) who may be having an affair with mom (Sally Hawkins). Fortunately, Submarine, Richard Ayoade's feature debut, is aware of Oliver's self-justifying nature and the ways it could warp him…. Acutely aware of the long tradition of films about disaffected young men coming to terms with themselves, Ayoade doesn't duck the precedent: instead, like Oliver…, he nods to seemingly every single precursor. There's a 400 Blows-quoting dash across the beach,...
- 6/3/2011
- MUBI
"Denis Villeneuve's Incendies — an operatic saga of intergenerational woe — is the cinematic equivalent of a Harlem Globetrotters game, with brazen contrivances and a preordained outcome repurposed as dazzling spectacle." David Ehrlich at Reverse Shot: "A strained melodrama that unspools like the bastard child of Homer and Alejandro González Iñárritu, Incendies devotes the brunt of its 130 minutes to earning the audacity of its resolution — it's a work of such unchecked ambition that it almost has to be excused before it can be appreciated at all. But if Villeneuve's film ultimately resolves itself as little more than a gaudy parlor trick, it's an expertly executed bit of chicanery whose punchline hits you square in the gut."
"It's a dual story," explains New York's David Edelstein, "of French-Canadian brother-and-sister twins compelled by the will of their dead mother to locate a father they thought died decades earlier and a brother they never knew existed; and,...
"It's a dual story," explains New York's David Edelstein, "of French-Canadian brother-and-sister twins compelled by the will of their dead mother to locate a father they thought died decades earlier and a brother they never knew existed; and,...
- 4/22/2011
- MUBI
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