Take two Irish hit-men — one twitchy, the other sentimental — and one ferocious Brit, and what do you get? Besides a civil war, I mean? In Bruges, of course: the debut feature by London-born Irish playwright Martin McDonagh.
The two hit-men, Ray and Ken, are played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. [...]
In 1939, The Rules of the Game was such a failure with the French public that they threw chairs at the screen and set newspapers alight in the theaters. It wasn’t much more popular with critics, and in 1940, director Jean Renoir fled Paris to make films abroad. He ended up in — [...]
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writers: Brian Koppelman, David Levien
Cinematographer: Steven Soderbergh (as Peter Andrews)
Editor: Stephen Mirrione
Production Designer: Philip Messina
The third of the Ocean movies by Soderbergh and company, Ocean’s Thirteen follows the formula laid out in the first two: Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his cronies set out to accomplish an un-accomplishable heist. In the [...]
Director: Anne Fletcher
Writer: Aline Brosh McKenna
Cinematographer: Peter James
Editor: Priscilla Nedd-Friendly
I confess a fondness for romantic comedies. (That’s right — I’m male and I like rom-coms. Wanna make something of it?) And one of the reasons, I suspect, is their predictability: they are as formal and mannered as Kabuki theater. And there’s [...]
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
Direction: Julian Schnabel
Screenplay: Ronald Harwood
Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski
Editing: Juliette Welfling
I resisted seeing this for a time, because it just didn’t seem like a story that I would like. Despite all the reviews to the contrary, it seemed gimmicky — a film from the point-of-view (POV) of a paralytic man, a [...]
Election (2005)
Director: Johnny To;
Cinematograper: Siu-keung Cheng;
Editor: Patrick Tam
Note: this is a new feature here at the Creek, covering films I love but don’t have time (or I’m just too lazy) to write about in a full-length review.
This predecessor to 2006’s Triad Election (which I reviewed here) chronicles the rise to power of [...]
One of the distinctive things about the last years in film was the polarizing of bloggers and critics and others around either Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men or Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. I’m not sure what to make of it . . . it seemed that they were [...]
Unlike a real critic, I don’t have to go to movies I don’t think I’m going to like. I don’t have an editor assigning me films to review, nor do I feel the need to see everything, so I can warn the public–the members of which don’t listen to critics anyway–not to waste its [...]
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