Shame

Apr14
2012 Leave a Comment

Written by Jason

In New York City, Brandon’s carefully cultivated private life — which allows him to indulge his sexual addiction — is disrupted when his sister Sissy arrives unannounced for an indefinite stay.

Running Time: 1hr. 39min.

MPAA Rating: NC-17


100% CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: Roger Ebert This is a great act of filmmaking and acting. I don’t believe I would be able to see it twice.
100% Variety: Justin Chang A mesmerizing companion piece to his 2008 debut, “Hunger,” this more approachable but equally uncompromising drama likewise fixes its gaze on the uses and abuses of the human body, as Michael Fassbender again strips himself down, in every way an actor can, for McQueen’s rigorous but humane interrogation.
100% Salon.com: Andrew O’Hehir It’s first and foremost a visual and sonic symphony, and a Dante-esque journey through a New York nightworld where words are mostly useless or worse.
100% SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: Amy Biancolli Shame has a lolling pace and stunning visual clarity. Structurally, it’s close to perfect – its precision echoed in the Glenn Gould piano recordings of Bach keyboard works that Brandon listens to obsessively.
90% LOS ANGELES TIMES: Kenneth Turan It is Mulligan and most especially Fassbender that give the film its power. The desperation, hostility and despair he conveys through the act of sex make Shame a film that is difficult to watch but even harder to turn away from.
75% USA Today: Claudia Puig Fassbender’s portrayal is truly haunting, and when he sobs, dramatically unraveling, it’s clear he’s imprisoned by his physical urges.
75% ROLLING STONE: Peter Travers Michael Fassbender delivers a bold and brilliantly immersive performance as a sex addict in Shame. He is so raw and riveting you won’t be able to take your eyes off him.
75% Washington Post: Ann Hornaday Fans of Fassbender’s yummy performances in this year’s “Jane Eyre” and “X-Men: First Class” should be forewarned that, although we see the handsome Irish actor in the altogether, Shame is strangely un-sexy.
70% WALL STREET JOURNAL: Joe Morgenstern Much of the film is banal or pretentious, or both – vacuous vignettes about emptiness. Occasionally, though, those vignettes burst into life and burn with consuming fire.
60% The New York Times: A.O. Scott How can visual pleasure communicate existential misery? It is a real and interesting challenge, and if Shame falls short of meeting it, the seriousness of its effort is hard to deny.

Posted in Films

Thirsty Thursdays at The David Minor

Apr10
2012 Leave a Comment

Written by Jason

Posted in Speical Events

The Annual Big Lebowski Party

Apr10
2012 Leave a Comment

Written by Jason

Posted in Speical Events

Gone With The Wind – Part 1

Apr09
2012 Leave a Comment

Written by Jason

American classic in which a manipulative woman and a roguish man carry on a turbulent love affair in the American south during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Running Time: 1hr. 55min.

MPAA Rating: G

AMG Review

by Lucia Bozzola

As epic as the 1,000-plus-page Margaret Mitchell bestseller on which it was based, David O. Selznick’s production of Gone With the Wind (1939) went through three directors, a well-publicized search for Scarlett O’Hara, and a then-enormous four-million-dollar budget, resulting in one of the all-time highest-grossing movies. Sparing no expense on sets and costumes, Selznick aimed to produce the ultimate Technicolor blockbuster, faithfully adapting the book’s Civil War era travails of Southern belle Scarlett and her roguish match, Rhett Butler. While the film is grand in scale (and length), its cast, especially relative unknown Vivien Leigh as Scarlett and MGM king Clark Gable as Rhett, made the narrative as engrossing as the spectacular recreation of the burning of Atlanta (in which old sets were torched). Premiering first in Atlanta, Gone With the Wind delivered on the promise of the hype, breaking box-office records. Earning an unprecedented 13 Oscar nominations, Gone With the Wind won eight statuettes and two special awards, taking Best Picture in Hollywood’s “miraculous” year, as well as Best Director for Victor Fleming, and Best Actress for Vivien Leigh. Best Supporting Actress Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American actor to win an Oscar. Perennially popular, Gone With the Wind inspired the 1994 sequel Scarlett. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

Posted in Films

The Iron Lady

Apr02
2012 Leave a Comment

Written by Jason

An elderly Margaret Thatcher talks to the imagined presence of her recently deceased husband as she struggles to come to terms with his death while scenes from her past life, from girlhood to British prime minister, intervene.

Running Time: 1hr. 45 min.

MPAA Rating: PG-13


88 ROLLING STONE: Peter Travers The sharp economy of Lloyd’s direction allows the incontestably great Streep to take impressionistic snatches of a life and build a woman in full. This is acting of the highest order.
75 Philadelphia Inquirer: Steven Rea Yea or nay, love or hate, the portrait that Streep delivers in Phyllida Lloyd’s impressionistic biopic is astonishing.
75 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Lisa Schwarzbaum Streep is a pleasure to behold; less so the rest of The Iron Lady.
75 SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: Mick LaSalle Imagine a biopic about Ronald Reagan that leaves out Gorbachev but instead dramatizes his years with Alzheimer’s, and you’ll get an idea of this film’s misplaced focus.
63 USA Today: Claudia Puig It’s hard to rationalize the vision of this dotty elderly woman with the tough-minded politician. The story lacks insight, glosses over key political issues and is unworthy of Streep’s masterful performance.
60 LOS ANGELES TIMES: Betsy Sharkey The film catches her long after she’s left the public eye, and rather than an examination, or an assessment, of her politics, it instead offers up an affecting if not always satisfying portrait of the strong-willed leader humbled by age.
50 Washington Post: Ann Hornaday Can a performance be too good? Meryl Streep disappears so uncannily into former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady that her performance overpowers the movie it’s in – a perfectly executed triple axel that renders everything else just featureless ice.
50 Boston Globe: Wesley Morris It’s a parade float atop which Streep can pose and impose. Sometimes her showmanship amounts to shamelessness. She wants us to watch her sack another part.
50 THE NEW YORKER: David Denby This bio-pic, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd, is an oddly unsettled compound of glorification and malice. It whirts around restlessly and winds up nowhere. [2 Jan. 2012, p.78]
50 CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: Roger Ebert You have to be very talented to work with Meryl Streep. It also helps to know how to use her. The Iron Lady fails in both of these categories.

Posted in Films

A Dangerous Method

Mar29
2012 Leave a Comment

Written by Jason

Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender star in director David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Christopher Hampton’s play detailing the deteriorating relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. The year is 1904. Carl Jung (Fassbender), a disciple of Sigmund Freud (Mortensen), is using Freudian techniques to treat Russian-Jewish psychiatric patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) at Burghölzli Mental Hospital. But the deeper Jung’s relationship with Spielrein grows, the further the burgeoning psychiatrist and his highly respected mentor drift apart. As Jung struggles to help his patient overcome some pressing paternal issues, disturbed patient Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel) sets out to test the boundaries of the doctor’s professional resolve.

Running Time: 1hr 33min

MPAA Rating: R


100 Salon.com: Andrew O’Hehir It’s a handsome and stimulating film, noteworthy more for its terrific acting and provocative ideas than for any kind of dark Cronenbergundian genius.
91 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Lisa Schwarzbaum Intelligent conversation about the interplay of erotic and destructive urges takes place over cups of tea in fine bone china. Yet the movie is a radically modern story about sex.
90 The New York Times: A.O. Scott Full of ideas about sexuality – some quite provocative, even a century after their first articulation – but it also recognizes and communicates the erotic power of ideas.
88 ROLLING STONE: Peter Travers The actors give it their all, especially Knightley, whose jaw- jutting, heavily accented and unfairly criticized portrayal gives the film its fighting spirit.
88 CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: Roger Ebert Using a dialogue-heavy approach that’s unusual for Cronenberg, his film is skilled at the way it weaves theory with the inner lives of its characters. We are learning, yet never feel we’re being taught.
80 WALL STREET JOURNAL: Joe Morgenstern Represents a big growth spurt in Mr. Cronenberg’s career. Its measured pace, along with a style that is sometimes austere (though sometimes anything but) repays close attention with excellent acting and a wealth of absorbing information.
75 Washington Post: Ann Hornaday Mortensen has called A Dangerous Method Cronenberg’s “Merchant-Ivory picture,” but it just as often resembles a Woody Allen movie – literate, sophisticated and deeply concerned with sex and manners. (It’s even mordantly funny, as an early scene at the Freud family dinner table attests.)
75 NEW YORK POST: Lou Lumenick Gorgeously photographed by Peter Suschitzky, A Dangerous Method presents a vivid portrait of pre-World War I Europe that’s at a considerable remove from the types of madness usually seen in Cronenberg’s films.
70 NPR: Mark Jenkins The clinical style doesn’t play to the director’s strengths. A Dangerous Method didn’t have to be another “Naked Lunch,” but Freud plus Jung plus Cronenburg should have equaled something a little more dissonant and troubling.
70 LOS ANGELES TIMES: Kenneth Turan It’s fascinating to see the exceptionally charismatic Fassbender squeeze himself into the role of the aristocratic, restrained Jung, and it’s just as enjoyable to see Mortensen bring an unexpected virility to his sybaritic, cigar-chomping Freud.

Posted in Films

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Mar12
2012 Leave a Comment

Written by Jason

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist is aided in his search for a woman who has been missing for forty years by Lisbeth Salander, a young computer hacker.

Running Time: 2hrs. 38min.

MPAA Rating: R


100 CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: Roger Ebert A compelling thriller to begin with, but it adds the rare quality of having a heroine more fascinating than the story.
100 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Owen Gleiberman Fincher has made The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo into an electrifying movie by turning the audience into addicts of the forbidden, looking for the sick and twisted things we can’t see.
100 CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: Roger Ebert A compelling thriller to begin with, but it adds the rare quality of having a heroine more fascinating than the story.
100 SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: Mick LaSalle The resulting film is neither better nor worse than the Swedish film, but it’s more cinematic.
90 LOS ANGELES TIMES: Betsy Sharkey A mind-bending and mesmerizing thriller that takes its time unlocking one mystery only to uncover another, all to chilling and immensely satisfying effect.
90 LOS ANGELES TIMES: Betsy Sharkey A mind-bending and mesmerizing thriller that takes its time unlocking one mystery only to uncover another, all to chilling and immensely satisfying effect.
90 THE NEW YORKER: David Denby This is a bleak but mesmerizing piece of filmmaking; it offers a glancing, chilled view of a world in which brief moments of loyalty flicker between repeated acts of betrayal.
88 Philadelphia Inquirer: Steven Rea This beautifully taut and terrifying thriller is faithful to its source in just about every way that matters.
88 ReelViews: James Berardinelli Balances character development with plot, and that’s crucial to its success.
88 USA Today: Claudia Puig Fincher’s electrifying storytelling makes the most of unsettling visuals, large casts, complex plots and sharp dialogue.

Posted in Films

Shame

Thirsty Thursdays at The David Minor

The Annual Big Lebowski Party

Gone With The Wind – Part 1

AMG Review

by Lucia Bozzola

The Iron Lady

A Dangerous Method

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

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