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An Evening with Frankenstein

So exactly what is National Theatre LIVE anyway, you may be wondering?

Simply put, it’s a program run by the Royal National Theatre in London, which broadcasts live performances of their productions via satellite, to movie theaters, cinemas and arts centres around the world. If you live in the UK or nearby, you’ll see it as a live simulcast; like watching a sporting event. And if you live farther away (Canada) you’ll see it as delayed broadcast and what we were shown.

Sex, politics and dust-busting

When I watched “The Ides of March” (2011) early in this year, it took me back to my memories with Mike Nichols’ “Primary Colors” (1998), which already told us almost everything the former wanted to tell. When I watched it in 1999, it looked like a sarcastic story inspired by Bill Clinton’s first presidential election campaign in 1992, but now the movie looks more like a timeless political comedy drama which understands a lot about how politicians alternatively dazzle and disappoint us with their better and worse sides.

“Passion Fish:” A struggle of wills

Streaming on Netflix Instant

When I watched “The Intouchables” (2011) at the local movie theater several months ago, I got a nagging dissatisfaction with that crowd-pleaser, which was about the warm friendship between a disabled man and a caregiver hired by him. The movie was surely a pleasant drama with two amiable lead performances, but I found it too mild and superficial; it merely loitered around thin stereotypes and worn-out clichés and it went no further than that.

A faceless corporate enemy

Gerardo Valero

“The Insider” is one of Michael Mann’s best films and it represents a departure from the usual themes. One constant in his other movies is the imposing, menacing but sympathetic villain figure. They may all be capable of great violence but the tragic side of their stories helps the audience identify. In contrast, “The Insider” gives us something completely different: a faceless and unsympathetic enemy that bends the will of those who get in its way without the need of doing anything particularly spectacular or even executing it on-screen: a villain aware that the fear of losing something like health insurance may be enough to shut its victims up. Its power comes from the income provided by the countless smokers unable to quit its product and its most important goal is to make sure that they never do.

A letter from the barricades in Cairo

Wael is a gifted young film critic who joined his fellow Far-Flung Correspondents at Ebertfest 2010. Today the group received this word from him after a week of silence.

We took a specific safe route to my grandfather’s house on Thursday night. After a good night sleep, I met up with fellow friends and protestors of Zamalek and walked to Tahrir Square where the majority of the protestors chanted and waved their hands in unity. The Friday protest was exhausting for we were struggling to stand our ground. The police fired tear-gas and it was the first time for me to inhale this toxic material.

The Pursuit of Power

Omer M. Mozaffar

Josh Trank’s “Chronicle” is the kind of film that curious teenage boys dedicate their hopes and dreams to, before succumbing to thoughts about health insurance and car payments. It advertises itself as a small movie about a few giggling, frowning high schoolers. The movie starts out as a curious plastic toy. Along the way, however, it carefully reveals itself as a colossal amusement park of screams and shouts. Don’t let anyone spoil this movie for you, because it is the cult film of its generation.

Remembering my father’s face

Pablo Villaça

I remember my father’s face, but not his voice. If I close my eyes I can perfectly see his expression of disapproval this one time when I was five years old, and another one of deep affection, at more or less the same time, but I cannot remember what he said – or even if said something – in each of those moments. What I do know beyond any doubt is that The Tree of Life, a masterpiece of filmmaker Terrence Malick, kindly led me to these reminiscences through his own philosophical reflection on human nature and our history on this planet. In this sense, the film represents a deeply religious experience for atheists, humanists, and especially film lovers.

Happiness is a little daughter

Omer M. Mozaffar

How long does it take for a good movie to convince you to watch it? Ridley Scott’s “Matchstick Men,” announced itself in the first scene, presented its product in the second, introduced paperwork in the third, and closed the deal in the fourth. The two hour long “Matchstick Men” sold in me less than seven minutes.

“The Chaser,” a great thriller from South Korea

The movie I want to talk about is Korean Movie “The Chaser”. I watched it in early 2008 and I hadn’t had much expectation since watching its trailer. However, after watching the movie, I chose it as one of the best Korean movies of 2008.

Several weeks ago, Mr. Ebert gave enthusiastic review to this terrific film and I decided to talk about it as one of Korean audience.

The “Shawshank” Greatness

Gerardo Valero

Is Frank Darabont’s “The Shawshank Redemption” the best motion-picture of all time? According to Internet Movie Database users, that is exactly the case. The advent of the internet likely brought together the largest congregation of movie fans in history, ready to express their opinions in the most accessed movie data base ever, and the best rated film there is “The Shawshank Redemption.”

This isn’t something to take lightly, true, but there are peculiarities about the website’s data that needs to be considered. If you’ve followed their rankings in the past you may have noticed that the response by users to recently released films tends to be more extreme than that of older ones, in other words, a recent good movie might initially appear with a higher rating and a bad one with a lower one; films only seem to reach their rightful place with the passage of time and particularly with the accumulation of a larger number of votes. Their opening weekend is not the most accurate of moments to evaluate what audiences really think about them.

A man with inklings of a soul

The 60s were a rough transition for America. Major shifts seemed to be occurring in every fabric of society from civil rights to sexual mores. The worsening course of the Vietnam war fueled distrust in political institutions. Women’s rights highlighted a breaking from oppressive traditions. The old seemed to be fading away more radically than ever before.

Like the era it was made in, “Hud” was a key shift. As film critic Emmanuel Levy correctly puts it, it is “a transitional film between the naive films of the early 60s and the more cynical ones later in the decade.” Though it plays as a compelling drama of small town life and family tribulation, through its lens of father-son conflict, it also captures the angst in the loss of authority, the gap between of two different generations, and an elegy for the good ole’ days.

The Jackal takes aim

Gerardo Valero

Fred Zinnemann’s “The Day of the Jackal” (1973) is a great example of how a film can do a good job of creating tension and involving the viewer by sticking with the most basic cinematic elements. We have the benefit of comparing it with a remake (“Jackal,” 1997) that went on the opposite direction and by wrongly doing everything that its predecessor got right, making he merits of the earlier version all the more evident. Both are distinctive reflections of how studios perceived audience tastes in their respective time periods. They are as different as two movies based on the same source might be and can hardly be classified in the same genre. The later entry is a brainless action flick; the original is a “thriller” in every sense of the word.

Cinema through a cloudy eye

Charlie Schmidlin

Bolstered by Akira Ifukube’s trudging “Gojira” theme and the shorthand it affords, on two separate filmic occasions director Leos Carax chose to pair it with a city-scrolling vista, and in doing so reference his past work for the first time. Homage and visual motifs have always earmarked the enigmatic auteur’s films, namely in the unstable romances of “Boy Meets Girl” and “Les Amants de Pont Neuf,” but within his two most recent efforts — a section of the 2008 triptych “Tokyo!” and his 2012 vexing “Holy Motors” — he centers this rare repetition on one character that is not so much a reprisal as it is an emotional transformation.

He coulda been a contender

Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” has been discussed endlessly by film fans, critics and film historians. It’s easy to see why, for “On the Waterfront” can be studied from various perspectives. On the one hand the film reflects a time in history when some Americans named names before the House of Un-American Activities Committee much like Terry Malloy does in court. It has also been argued to be Kazan’s answer to Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible” or his redemption and justification for falling victim of Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt of the 1950’s.

A man living at the edge

Gerardo Valero

Hi, this is Gerardo Valero and today I’d like to talk to you about “Changing Lanes” in which Ben Affleck plays the typical bright but self-absorbed, school-smart Yuppie who gets to marry the boss’ daughter but his knowledge of the ways of the world are rather limited, specially since he’s mastered the art of lying to himself all his life. His best friend and ex-lover played by the always excellent Toni Colette is much more self-aware than him but she doesn’t have his ambitions, or simply put, she knows the ways of the world too well to want anything to do with what it would require from her, to take the next step in life. It is only because of her love for Banek that she tries to help him by providing ill-advised solutions to his problems, which despite her good intentions only make things worse. 

Beautiful people staring at each other

Omer M. Mozaffar

Sometimes, I just want to stare at beautiful people, even if they spend most of the movie just staring at each other. I think it’s in the eyes, especially when the eyes are smiling. Sometimes, I just want to sigh, watching them longing for each other. Ashutosh Gowariker’s 2008 film, “Jodhaa Akbar” let me do so, for three hours.

This Indian film is an unabashed epic that targets that greatest of all Indian epics, K. Asif’s 1960 film, “Mughal-e-Azam” (“The Greatest of Mughals”). It is a prequel of sorts: “Jodhaa Akbar” tells us the story of the Mughal Emperor Akbar and his wife Jodhaa; “Mughal-e-Azam” is about their son, Jehangir. Like any other man of withering virility and receded hairline, I like beautiful things and beautiful people, and “Jodhaa Akbar” is loaded with carved reddish palaces, golden decorations, and silk scarves of every color. And beautiful people.

The Arikan Agenda: Best films of 2010

Ali Arikan

An old friend and I reunited for the first time in 13 years in Washington, DC last month, and the talk eventually turned to Facebook, the primary way we’ve managed to keep in touch, at least recently. I have a particular trait, usually reserved for after a night out on the town, by which friends can easily identify the level of my joviality, when I post videos of classic rock songs. Despite my assertion that a certain amount of fastidiousness should be necessary when it comes to sharing links on Facebook, I tend to disregard my own advice and post widely popular songs by legendary bands, for which I apologized to my friend.

Lars von Trier and the Antichrist

Pablo Villaça

So, Cannes 2011: Malick was booed, Lars von Trier was banned and “Pirates of the Caribbean 4” was presented as hors-concours. If those are any indication, I predict “Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo 3” will win the Palm d’Or in 2012.

But in all seriousness, Cannes: banning von Trier? Really? Persona non grata for making some jokes (yes, in very poor taste, but jokes still) in the same year you had Mel Gibson over? The same Mel Gibson who made anti-semitic remarks, defended his father for denying the Holocaust and was recorded in a racist rant over the telephone?

Kathryn Bigelow’s uncanny “Strange Days,” by Michael Mirasol of the Philippines

2009 was a great year for Kathryn Bigelow. After a 7-year hiatus from filming K-19: The Widowmaker, she returned to direct The Hurt Locker, a suspense and war film set in Iraq that has deservedly been recognized by critics and award bodies alike, and is expected to be one of the primary contenders for the Academy Awards. Bigelow is known for her superb work in the action genre, which is rarity among female directors. Her skill in filming tension and violence is as good as any of today’s directors.

A South Korean “Zodiac”

When David Fincher’s “Zodiac” (2007) was released in South Korean theaters, it was immediately compared to a famous South Korean film. That movie was also based on the infamous serial killing case still remaining unsolved to this day, and it is also about the desperation, frustration, and obsession of the people who wanted to find the man behind the horrific killings.