Day: March 14, 2015
SXSW Film Review: ‘Raiders!’
March 14, 2015There’s a good reason why TV and movies have adopted the disclaimer “Remember kids, don’t try this at home.” As inventive as they were impressionable, pint-sized super-fans Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb nearly killed themselves on multiple occasions attempting to remake the first Indiana Jones movie, breaking it down shot-for-shot and filming each scene […]
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SXSW Film Review: ‘Hello, My Name Is Doris’
March 14, 2015Despite some bumpy tonal shifts and inconsistencies of characterization, “Hello, My Name Is Doris” impresses as a humanely amusing and occasionally poignant dramedy about a spinsterish office drone who develops a romantic fixation on a much younger co-worker. The plot could have been played as a flat-out broad comedy or an anxiety-inducing psychological drama, and […]
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SXSW Film Review: ‘The Final Girls’
March 14, 2015An amusingly meta horror-thriller, “The Final Girls” finds a group of modern youths trapped in a cheesy ’80s slasher movie — one whose conventions they’re well aware of, but whose body count they’re also susceptible to joining. Though not quite as inspired or consistent as the similarly self-mocking likes of “The Cabin in the Woods,” “Tucker & Dale […]
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SXSW Film Review: ‘Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine’
March 14, 2015Hot on the heels of his riveting Scientology takedown “Going Clear,” the ever-prolific Alex Gibney calls the much farther-reaching cult of Apple into question with “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine,” a coolly absorbing, deeply unflattering portrait of the late Silicon Valley entrepreneur that expands, not altogether convincingly, into a meditation on our collective over-reliance […]
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SXSW Film Review: ‘Naz & Maalik’
March 14, 2015Two young Muslim men balance their mutual romantic attraction with life in post-9/11 Brooklyn in “Naz & Maalik.” The provocative-sounding feature debut of writer-director Jay Dockendorf earns points for unique subject matter, only to squander its potential on an innocuously blase hangout narrative. Additional fest play following a SXSW bow is a given, and the central […]
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SXSW Film Review: ‘6 Years’
March 14, 2015Having explored an illicit affair between a high-school instructor and student in “A Teacher,” writer-director Hannah Fidell focuses on a doomed relationship of a rather more banal (if age-appropriate) sort in “6 Years.” Although shot and performed in a determinedly raw, naturalistic register, this emotionally roiling portrait of two twentysomething Texas sweethearts too often veers toward […]
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SXSW Film Review: ‘Creative Control’
March 14, 2015Photo by Adam Newport-Berra Well timed in light of the unveiling of the Apple Watch, “Creative Control” reps a big step forward for its co-writer/director, Benjamin Dickinson, following his promising 2012 debut, “First Winter.” The story of an ad exec who finds his priorities rewired while testing a pair of eyeglasses that constitute “the first […]
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Miami Film Review: ‘In the Grayscale’
March 14, 2015Often treated in film as an adjunct to LGBT experience, bisexuality gets measured, sensitive consideration in the Chilean coming-out drama “In the Grayscale.” A gentle boy-meets-boy romance that builds into a balanced ideological debate between its two lovers — one a gay man for whom homosexuality is a black-or-white concept, the other choosing to remain, […]
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SXSW Film Review: ‘Brand: A Second Coming’
March 14, 2015Russell Brand created some high-profile drama at the last minute by choosing not to attend the world premiere of Ondi Timoner’s documentary about him (or give his scheduled keynote speech) at SXSW — probably getting more press than he would have by showing up as planned. The suspicion that this might be a clever ruse is […]
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