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Film Reviews
Film Review – The Grand Budapest Hotel
In the connection between history and understanding is memory. Stories are predicated on memory between time and place. It is in this space where interpretation comes from. Information about somewhere and some-when informs our imagination, which in turn creates a memory of something we were…
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Film Review – Need For Speed
We’re only a quarter of the way through 2014, but we’ve found a candidate for Goofiest Movie of the Year. Need For Speed (2014) continues the trend of video games turned into films. The trend hasn’t been a good one. No consideration is taken for…
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Film Review – Better Living Through Chemistry
Better Living Through Chemistry comes off as a comedic reworking of Double Indemnity. Sifted through an independent comedy sensibility, the film concerns a meek cuckold of a husband and father who is taken in by a seductress. While similar plots are well worn and may…
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SXSW Film Review – The Raid 2: Berandal
Gareth Evans’ The Raid: Redemption (2011) was an exhilarating action thriller. Set within an apartment complex in Jakarta, we watched police officer Rama (Iko Uwais) fight his way through gangsters and drug dealers with non-stop ferocity. It reset the standard for how far action pictures…
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SXSW TV Review – Showtime’s Penny Dreadful
Penny Dreadful is Showtime’s newest original series. Episode 1 had its world premiere at SXSW for a crowd at the Vimeo Theater. Having seen the show’s trailer, I was intrigued enough to take a break from the many films I had seen for an hour…
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Film Review – Yakona
Paul Collins and Anlo Sepulveda’s Yakona (2014) doesn’t contain a true plot, but it does have a story. Focusing on the San Marcos River in Texas, the film sidesteps the usual narrative structure found in fiction and documentaries, and rather paints an impressionistic picture of…
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SXSW Film Review – Song from the Forest
Michael Obert’s documentary Song from the Forest investigates the relationship between man and his environment. It seeks to find the meaning behind modern conceptions of art, commerce and civilizations through the lens of an objective camera, showing us only snip-bits and snap shots of the…
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SXSW Film Review – Born To Fly
“I never had any trouble with the take-off. It’s landing that’s the problem.” – Evel Knievel Elizabeth Streb knows who she is. Director Catherine Gund (who is premiering her documentary Born To Fly at this year’s SXSW Festival) knows who Streb is as well and…
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