Blogs: For Reels

PIETÀ ★★★★ The pietà is the Christian depiction of Mary cradling her dying son following his crucifixion. Its most famous rendition is Michelangelo’s sculpture in St. Peter’s Basilica, and it’s no stretch to say that South Korean writer-director Kim Ki-duk considers himself a Michelangelo of film, proudly proclaiming in Pietà’s opening credits, a la...
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THE TAIWAN OYSTER ★★ “I feel like a minor character in someone else’s story,” the main character in director Mark Jarrett’s debut feature tells his friend. The same goes for the audience of The Taiwan Oyster, as we often feel like mere observers, watching the action without much emotion or interest. Two American friends,...
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When I was a kid, we didn’t have Rotten Tomatoes or Fandango. There was no IMDB to refer to and there weren’t myriad film blogs and websites to refer to for fresh takes on newly released films. Instead, we had Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, whose “Siskel and Ebert and the Movies” kept us...
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BIG STAR: NOTHING CAN HURT ME ★★★ This necessary documentary tells a story through the speckled old photographs of “a reluctant rock band with an ironic name.” Most of the joy in Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me comes from nostalgic critics who helped Big Star to become a band known for their devotion...
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________________________________________________________________________ FAME HIGH ★★★★ There’s nothing completely unique about this film, which follows four students (Zak, Ruby, Grace and Brittany) through a school year at “Fame High,” the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, a rigorous public school that helps talented teens prepare for careers in the performing arts. Parents from all...
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Twenty years, two diminishing-returns sequels, multiple theme park attractions, and endless merchandising may have conspired to dull your memory of that magical first viewing of Jurassic Park. The 1993 sci-fi adventure, adapted from Michael Crichton's thoughtful thriller about chaos theory and genetic engineering, was in a way the last gasp of director Steven Spielberg's...
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  ICEBERG SLIM: PORTRAIT OF A PIMP ★★★★ Many of the best documentaries take a subject with which you’re either unfamiliar or uncomfortable and allow you to embrace it, if only for an hour and a half in the dark. That’s especially true with Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp, a unique glimpse into...
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YEAR OF THE LIVING DEAD ★★★★ If you like movies in which an intrepid guerrilla film crew cobbles together a low-budget feature – and if you go to film festivals, you probably do – you’ll embrace this fun, informative doc about the making of the original Night of the Living Dead. Zombie godfather George...
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_____________________________________________________ PUTZEL ★★ “Listen to the guilt. It’s like a GPS for the soul.” For Walter, those words ring true, but what else would you expect for a guy whose nickname is Putzel, or essentially “little putz” or “schmuck” in Yiddish? They are his guiding light in life, his blueprint for lowering his expectations,...
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RENOIR ★★★★ Most films labor furiously, trying to infuse every frame with passion. Renoir is content to sit still, creating effortless beauty in the style of its subject, painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. A French-language production set on the Riviera in 1915, this drama is both a love poem to Renoir’s art and a love triangle...
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