Tag: drama
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All life’s a play in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York
Whether it actually is or not, Synecdoche, New York has the feel of a very, very personal work of art. I know next to nothing about writer/director Charlie Kaufman’s personal life, and don’t even necessarily feel like I do now. Then again, few people do know Kaufman, as he has famously managed to sidestep much…
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John Sturges honors Kurosawa honoring Ford in The Magnificent Seven
John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven is Hollywood’s answer to Akira Kurosawa’s hugely popular Seven Samurai. It suffers in comparison, especially if, like this blogger, one watches them in quick succession. The remake is quaint, chaste, and dated in ways the fairly frank original isn’t. To put it another way, Seven Samurai is a period piece…
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Wong Kar-wai’s American road movie My Blueberry Nights
Wong Kar-wai’s first English-language film My Blueberry Nights is mostly set in bars and diners across America. His characters all indulge in the four great American pastimes: eating, drinking, gambling, and driving. Nobody films beautiful women, or should I say, nobody films women beautifully, like Wong Kar-wai. In Blueberry Nights, he has no less than…
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Get busy living or get busy dying: Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption
It’s hard to believe now, but The Shawshank Redemption was a relative flop at the box office, and overlooked in all seven of its Academy Award nominations (losing the 1994 Best Picture to Forrest Gump). But true to its own themes, it found redemption late in life, on television and home video. It regularly tops…
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Who abandoned whom in Tamara Jenkins’ The Savages?
The Savages is the story of a fractured family, separated not least by geography, that reunites on the occasion of an aged parent’s health. Both siblings haven’t seen their father in years, so what was probably a slow decline seems to them a sudden plunge into senility. Both have their own problems, and neither is…
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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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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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Ang Lee’s very un-titillating erotic thriller Se, jie (Lust, Caution)
As a public service, this blog would like to issue a warning to anyone that under the impression that Se, jie (Lust, Caution) is an NC-17 erotic thriller. Judging from the marketing campaign alone, one might understandably imagine that the latest film from the director of Sense & Sensibility and Eat Drink Man Woman would…