Monday, April 1, 2013

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 3/13

The non-Criterion movies I saw last month...


IN THEATRES...

Spring Breakers, Harmony Korine's hotly debated, inconsistent subversion of Girls Gone Wild and thug life.

Stokerthe weird, creepy, baffling English-language debut from Oldboy director Park Chan-wook.

The We and the IMichel Gondry's social experiment following a group of Bronx high schoolers on their bus ride home.


My Oregonian columns:

March 7: featuring Tess, Roman Polanski's adaptation of Thomas Hardy; a climate change documentary called Greedy Lying Bastards; and an absolute waste-of-time horror anthology entitled The ABCs of Death.

March 14: the documentaries A Place at the Table, about food distribution and poverty, and Turning, featuring a special performance piece by Antony & the Johnsons. Plus, Yossi, a sequel to the Israeli gay-themed love story Yossi & Jagger, picking up ten years after the events in the first film.

March 21: horror-based documentary My Amityville Horror and war drama The Kill Hole. (Worst title of the year?)

March 29: the poker documentary Drawing Dead, an indie "trapped in a car" thriller called Detour, and the Faux Film Festival.


ON BD/DVD...

China Heavyweight, a documentary following three Chinese boxers on their way up and maybe on their way down.

College: Ultimate Edition, the latest Buster Keaton reissue is predictably hilarious.

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, a documentary about the legendary fashion editor, whose career spanned half a century.

* Diary of a Chambermaid, the Jean Renoir adaptation from 1946, almost twenty years before Luis Bunuel.

For Ellen, the third film from So Yong Kim is as emotionally wrought as her others, but lacking certain connections. Starring Paul Dano.

* The Great Magician, a recent period piece set in 1930s China, with Tony Leung as an illusionist. The movie wants to be old-style entertainment, but it's not much fun.


Killing Them SoftlyAndrew Dominik's crime film was my second favorite movie of 2012, and it's even better the second time. Starring Brad Pitt.

* On Approval, a witty British comedy from 1944, directed by and starring Clive Brook.

* The Song of Bernadette, a dismal religious picture from the 1940s, starring Jennifer Jones as the girl who sees visions.

Strangers in the Night, a middling early career melodrama from Anthony Mann.

This is Not a Film, the lauded political documentary from Iran turns out to be much ado about nothing.


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