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Purity, Ubiquity & Legibility: Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica
Helvetica (the documentary film) is not about Helvetica (the typeface), per se. Rather, it’s about the arts of graphic design and typography, their practitioners, and how they affect our daily lives. Each luminary talking head has a different explanation of Helvetica’s appeal and longevity: neutrality, legibility, perfection (unlike more ornate typefaces, it is arguably comprised…
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The Musical Box recreates Genesis’ Black Show at Highline Ballroom, New York
The Musical Box is a Canadian group that stages elaborate recreations of entire concerts given by the English progressive rock band Genesis in the early 1970s. They perform closely-observed note-for-note cover versions of the original songs, in the original set list order, with full recreations of the set design, props, costumes, vintage instruments, and even…
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Robert Downey Jr.’s got a bum ticker in Jon Favreau’s Iron Man
Jon Favreau’s Iron Man finds just the right tone for a superhero movie, pitched somewhere in the sweet spot between Spider-Man’s emotional melodrama and Batman’s grim vengeance. This blogger, a former lover of comic books (that stopped keeping up with them partly out of frugality, and partly lack of brain bandwidth), sees two high water…
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Martin Scorsese remakes Internal Affairs as The Departed
Martin Scorsese works almost constantly, even keeping busy with documentaries between each higher-profile feature film. But the frequency of his fiction films is far enough apart for them to remain much more hotly anticipated, and every year that went by with him being passed over by the Academy Awards only more firmly established his status…
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Sidney Lumet shows us how it’s done in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is a powerful, electric return to form for the 83 year-old Sidney Lumet, director of such canonical classics as 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Network, and, uh, The Wiz? Kelly Masterson’s screenplay tells the high-tension tale of a pair of wholly doomed brothers as a non-linear narrative from multiple points…
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Charlton Heston is the alpha and The Omega Man
Now that’s a good intro: Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) cruises through an empty city with the top down. It’s eerie, but he seems happy, grooving to jazz from his onboard 8-track cassette deck. But suddenly! Screech! Ka-pow! He brakes, produces a machine gun and fires at a fleeting humanoid silhouette. A striking montage follows of…
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Guess what’s coming to dinner in Lars and the Real Girl
Lars and the Real Girl is warm, funny, and moving, but felt a little “screenplay” to me. Aside from the indie film cliche of The Small Town (which affords an isolated community of eccentrics and an economically small cast), it seems to be a precisely workshopped exploration of a simple compelling premise: a man falls…
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Tina Fey raids her rolodex for Baby Mama
As a true comedy auteur, Tina Fey’s acting has always come in tandem with her own writing. This double act has progressed from improv comedy at The Second City, to head writer for Saturday Night Live, to supporting player in the feature film Mean Girls, (for which she wrote the screenplay), and finally to executive…
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Hey, at least it was only 86 minutes long: AVP:R – Aliens vs. Predator – Requiem
Ridley Scott’s original Alien is one of the most effective and influential horror films ever made, and a personal favorite of mine, with no apologies. Its art direction and visual aesthetic were so far ahead of their time that pretty much only the hairstyles have dated, but the real keys to its longevity are its…
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Emma Thompson & Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility repopularized Jane Austen
In this blog’s opinion, Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility is the best-of-breed within Jane Austen film adaptations. Please note, however, there are two very good reasons to discredit my opinion on this subject: I. Despite my English major, I am ashamed to admit I have read only one Jane Austen novel: Emma. Yeah, I know,…
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David vs. Goliath in Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah
In the Valley of Elah is a dark story about the psychological damage of war, certainly not a recipe for an entertaining night at the movies. This blogger will cop to finding it difficult to work up the enthusiasm to sit down for a movie on such a troubling topic, fearing the resultant depression (despite…
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Sean Penn and Emile Hirsch go Into the Wild
Like many young men cursed with a privileged life of education and time to think for themselves, Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch) wanted only a vaguely defined “truth” and to not have to rely on anyone. Synthesizing his reading of Henry Thoreau and Jack London, he imagined for himself a life of self-sufficiency in the wilderness.…