By: Gesilayefa Azorbo Ballet 422, the much-anticipated new film from Jody Lee Lipes (NY Export: Opus Jazz), opens with a couple of facts. 91 – the number of full-time dancers at the prestigious New York City Ballet. 1948 – the year the ballet company was formed. The film then opens with a shot of these elite dancers walking down a darkened hallway to a mirrored practice studio. Then, shots of them stretching, warming up, wrapping their…
By: Addison Wylie I wouldn’t call Concerning Violence a movie or a documentary. It’s only being considered the latter because filmmaker Göran Olsson uses real footage – from the 60s and 70s – of African liberation in a perpetual clash. It’s more of a collection of footage being blown up on a screen to prove a point. Concerning Violence contains interviews, still images, and raw film that all flesh out these “nine scenes from the…
By: Addison Wylie Playing It Cool has its cake and eats it too, and knows damn well what it’s doing. However, director Justin Reardon is no David Wain or Charlie Kaufman, and Playing It Cool is nowhere near as clever as They Came Together or Adaptation. Reardon ventures into feature films with this smug rom-com send-up involving a bitter screenwriter (played by Chris Evans) who is given the task of writing a romantic comedy. He…
By: Mark Barber Like its source material, the film adaptation of E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey has taken quite a bit of flak for its tantalizing portrayal of abusive relationships. The film reeks of misogyny, but that’s only half the problem. While Sam Taylor-Johnson’s film resists some of the moral haziness of the book’s gender politics, it does so half-heartedly. Given the book’s start as Twilight fan-fiction, it’s not surprising how the film’s narrative…
By: Addison Wylie If Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen are going to be filmmakers, they really should write their own material. Their directorial debut and sleeper hit This Is the End sustained itself because of their clever weisenheimer writing satirizing self-involved Hollywood socialites. With their highly anticipated and controversial second feature The Interview, the pair are responsible for the story along with Dan Sterling. However, this time, they’ve abandoned the screenwriting phase and let Sterling…
By: Addison Wylie Due to its time of release, Girlhood is unfairly titled; causing many to draw immediate comparisons to Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. Girlhood is also a movie that is unfairly robbed of its natural moments by its filmmaker as they become more out of touch with their material. This is Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen re-imagined by a student who is still learning how to grasp their own sense of subtlety and composure. Thirteen is a better movie…
By: Addison Wylie If I was an actor starring in Revenge of the Green Dragons and I was watching the final cut of the film, I would be feeling cheesed by the filmmakers. Well, maybe if I wasn’t Harry Shum Jr., the dancing charmer from Glee who takes his acting to a more dramatic level with this crime film. If I was him, I would be feeling proud that I had pulled off a such…
By: Addison Wylie There’s an aristocratic quality to Love Is Strange. Everyone is nicely dressed in houses and restaurants that could all be rated five-stars. Characters laugh at high-brow jokes and mild-mannerly talk about “the classics”. Love Is Strange is a film so tidy, that you kind of want to scowl at it. But, the film is far too sweet and performed with accomplishment to feel such resentment towards Ira Sachs’ film. Ben and George…
By: Addison Wylie A tiny gem entering the mainstream circuit is Dogs on the Inside. The documentary features rescued dogs and prison inmates who look after them. Massachusetts’ Don’t Throw Us Away program gives both inmates and mistreated pups a second chance, as man and animal identify with each other. In other words: good luck trying to frown towards this film. Dogs on the Inside is a heartwarming documentary, showing the audience just how easy…
By: Addison Wylie The 50 Year Argument documents the persuasive, opinionated history of the highly regarded publication The New York Review of Books. The film chronicles the exclusive timeline decently, although the doc’s pacing and organization feels like it keeps us in our seats for fifty years. In the early 60’s, during the New York printers strike, The New York Review of Books found its footing as a magazine that didn’t feel tethered by opposing…