"Terror's Advocate" (2007)

"One can see a predilection for fringe characters throughout Schroeder’s career: More, with 1960s counterculture; General Idi Amin Dada, about the infamous Ugandan dictator; and Barfly, based on the writings of skid row’s poet laureate Charles Bukowski. Schroeder doesn’t necessarily align himself with his subjects, nor does he exploit or malign them. Instead, he is fascinated by the performance and construction of extreme individualism."

Read my full review of Terror's Advocate here at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/24/Film/feature6.cfm?ctype=2

"Finishing the Game" (2007)

"But racial politics seem to have got the better of Lin in Finishing the Game, as he spends so much time mocking cultural stereotypes that his characters rarely get the chance to move beyond them into any nuanced performances. Though reminiscent of Christopher Guest’s films (and the fake Dirk Diggler documentary featured in Boogie Nights), Finishing the Game lacks Guest’s subtle eccentricity, as well as his ability to render idiosyncratic characters with simultaneous strangeness and familiarity."

Read my entire review of Finishing the Game here at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/23/Film/feature7.cfm?ctype=2

Francois Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" (Les Quatre Cents Coups)

"Forty-eight years later, the film has lost none of its energy and continues to resonate with an ever-enlarging audience. Think of it as that guy/gal down the street that everyone knows and loves."

Read my review of Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups) here at The L Magazine online.
http://www.thelmagazine.com/film/film.cfm?listings_id2=83344

"Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4"

"The real value of this set lies beyond the worth of any individual film (Mystery Street, while fascinating, is uneven and dated) but in the reviving of such obscure curiosities alongside long out-of-print classics such as Nicholas Ray’s debut They Live By Night. Film noir was as much the creation of artists as it was hacks, of youthful innovation (Ray) and experienced craftsmanship (Andre de Toth, director of Crime Wave), and it is befitting that this box-set celebrates the union of such a cinematic myriad."

Read my full review of the "Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4" DVD box-set here at The Brooklyn Rail online.

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2007/9/film/film-noir-classic-collection-vol-4

"The Last Winter" (2006)

"Fessenden imbues the natural-disaster genre with an ambiguity that neither preaches environmental awareness nor contents itself with the spectacle of nature’s special effects-ridden wrath (unlike Twister, Volcano or any of its late-90s brethren). There’s an ethereal evil akin to J-Horror, a mood that spells disaster without actually spelling it out, leaving much interpretation open to the spectator."

Read my full review of Larry Fessenden's The Last Winter here at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/21/Film/feature8.cfm?ctype=2

"UnAmerican Activities: The Films of Abraham Polonsky"

"The films of Abraham Polonsky are filled with the ambitious and the opportunistic, with double crosses and betrayals, and with capitalist corruption and exploitation. They are the stuff of McCarthy-inspired nightmares, laden with paranoia about the loss of one’s constitutional rights."

Read my full review of "UnAmerican Activities: The Films of Abraham Polonsky" here at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/21/Film/feature3.cfm?ctype=2

"In The Shadow of the Moon" (2007)

"More than mere historical or scientific record, In the Shadow of the Moon is entrancing — and often exhilarating — as it returns the staid nostalgia of Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 to the level of mythology it deserves (Howard, ironically, helped distribute the film). Above all, it is the space footage itself that is so remarkable and captures, with a Lumiere-like simplicity, the majesty of moving images."

Click here to read my entire review of In The Shadow of the Moon at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/20/Film/feature5.cfm?ctype=2

"The King of Kong" (2007)

"This tale of the American Everyman would make even Frank Capra teary-eyed with pride."

Read the entire review here at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/film/film.cfm?listings_id2=145234

"The Early Films of Samuel Fuller" DVD Box Set

"I Shot Jesse James and The Baron of Arizona are daring, unconventional Westerns: the former offers a sympathetic portrayal of a cold-blooded murderer who shoots his boss in the back for a reward and a woman (Fuller’s reworking of genre conventions precedes such revisionist films as The Wild Bunch and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly by more than a decade), while the latter focuses on a forger’s attempt to rewrite history in order to inherit the state. The real gem of the set, however, is The Steel Helmet, the first American film to address the Korean War (only six months after it had begun). Unusually brutal for its time, the chaotic and unmannered finale remains potent 56 years later."

Read my review of The Early Films of Samuel Fuller DVD Box Set here at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/18/Film/feature3.cfm?ctype=2

"Manda Bala" (2007)

"There is an undeniable pulse to Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), a highly kinetic narrative somewhere between the stylized realism of City of God and the eccentric absurdism of Werner Herzog’s documentaries."


Click here to read my review of Manda Bala at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/18/Film/feature6.cfm?ctype=2

Hong Sang-Soo's "Turning Gate" (2002)

"Hong’s distinctive blend of comedy and drama never sinks to the conventions of either genre, striking an ambiguous and ironic chord somewhere in between the two. Awkward silences speak louder than words in Hong’s films, as though the characters are never quite sure what to say or what they want out of life. When they do speak it is always the wrong thing, and when they decide what they want they are always wrong: self-delusion and uncertainty haunt Hong’s characters like an unwanted epithet."

Click here to read my entire review of Turning Gate at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/17/Film/film12.cfm?ctype=2

"Summer '04" (2006)

"Stefan Krohmer’s Summer ‘04 is a masterful and original thriller that matches Rohmer’s vacationing plots with the paranoid and anxious underpinnings of Polanski, coming together in a noir-tinged story of desire, infidelity, responsibility — and, of course, moral ambiguity."

Click here to read my review of Summer '04 at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/17/Film/feature5.cfm?ctype=2

"The Camden 28" (2007)

"Like many liberal-minded activist documentaries, The Camden 28 has its heart in the right place, but its mind seems to wander. The play-by-play explanation of how they cased the building and planned the robbery is inspiring (if not educational), yet the recreation of the trial nearly 30 years later seems to lack the expected vigor."

Read my review of The Camden 28 (2007) here at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/16/Film/feature6.cfm?ctype=2

"I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" (2007)

"I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is shamelessly offensive, and it makes no apologies for the endless parade of gay jokes, fat jokes, gay fat jokes, and assorted humor about farts, bondage, boobies, and anything else your 13-year-old nephew has on his mind. Thirty minutes of this movie will bring the chuckling, immature inner bigot out of even the most staunchly mature liberal."

Read my review of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007) here at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/16/Film/feature7.cfm?ctype=2

"Drama/Mex" (2006)

"With echoes of the moral ambiguity of Eric Rohmer and the emotional torrents of John Cassavetes, Gerardo Naranjo’s probing second feature, Drama/Mex, is an urgent and melancholic look at emotional entrapment as it affects five people over the course of one day in Acapulco."

Click here to read my review of Drama/Mex (2006) at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/15/Film/feature4.cfm?ctype=2

"Introducing the Dwights" (2007)

For all its cathartic kicking and screaming (and drinking and blubbering), there’s not much of a story here, just a lot of conventional wisdom about growing up and growing older, that we’ve all seen and heard before. At her best, Brenda Blethyn’s performance borders on Mommie Dearest-territory, but every potentially interesting dark undertone is erased by a cringe-inducing happy ending that is all too reminiscent of Little Miss Sunshine.


Read my review of Introducing the Dwights (2007) here at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/14/Film/feature4.cfm?ctype=2

"Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

"As worthless as the movie actually is, it’s fascinating culturally as an attempt at making a politically correct post-9/11 action flick. We see car crashes galore, yet we never see any dead civilians... Omitting the casualties, however, doesn’t erase the endless banality of poorly paced action and definitely-not-clever one-liners."

Click here to read my review of Live Free or Die Hard at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/13/Film/film14.cfm?ctype=2

"Black Sheep" (2006)

"Equal parts The Birds, Jurassic Park and The Host, Black Sheep is more a satire on the horror genre than it is a cautionary tale about genetic engineering-gone-wrong in the New Zealand countryside. It continually reinvents the most clichéd elements of the horror genre, using easily recognizable and iconic shots from any number of other films…but this time with sheep."

Read my review of "Black Sheep" here at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/13/Film/feature5.cfm?ctype=2

"Fido" (2006)

"Informed by 1950s Communist-paranoia/ science-fiction classics such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, director Andrew Currie similarly wants Fido to be seen as a political allegory. But for all the contemporary touchstones (countless references to “fences,” xenophobia, and even a John Kerry look-alike), it rarely moves beyond an experiment in genre cross-pollination."

Read my review of "Fido" here at The L Magazine online.

http://thelmagazine.com/5/12/Film/feature8.cfm?ctype=2

"Four Lane Highway" (2005)

"First time writer-director Dylan McCormack renders the characters of Four Lane Highway so plainly and with such connect-the-dot dilemmas that it is difficult to sympathize with them."

Read my review of "Four Lane Highway" here at The L Magazine online.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/10/Film/feature5.cfm?ctype=2