RSS

Movies

The Madwoman in the Attic

E.J. GraffApr 23, 2012

Awhile back, I wasted an evening watching the 2011 film version of Jane Eyre, something that every former lit major should avoid. I loved the novel for its depiction of the vivid, rich inner life of a proud introvert who is passionately engaged in her life despite the fact that she knows it to be outwardly pathetic. The movie, unable to reproduce the character's inner liveliness, reduced the story to a melodramatic and utterly unlikely romance between a poor orphan and an arrogant nobleman. I had wasted marital chits on a movie that I hated as much as my wife knew she would. (Sports movies, here we come. Sigh.)

Stacked Decks

The Titanic’s surprisingly timely centenary

Tom CarsonApr 04, 2012
Copyright Bettmann/Corbis / AP Images

Is it callous to call the Titanic’s sinking everybody’s favorite disaster? No doubt, but you know what I mean. Considering how oodles of the tragic minutiae no buff can do without bump up against the climax’s unknowns, April 15, 1912, is like an ideal cross between the assassination of JFK and the Alamo.

Judges as Defendants, Directors as Judges

The Law in These Parts asks tough questions about the role of the courts in Israeli settlement policy.

Gershom GorenbergMar 30, 2012
Praxis Films

This time, it seems, justice has won: The West Bank settlement outpost of Migron must be demolished. So ruled the Israeli Supreme Court this week.

Someone's Lucky Day

Paul WaldmanMar 29, 2012
(Flickr/doncav)

Since the MegaMillions jackpot is now at a record $540 million, I thought it'd be a good time to link back to an interview interview I did in 2010 with the brilliant filmmaker Jeffrey Blitz, whom you may know from his Oscar-nominated documentary "Spellbound," or his excellent feature film "Rocket Science." I interviewed him about his film "Lucky," which offers portraits of lottery winners to see how their lives changed after coming in to millions of dollars. The film doesn't offer simple answers to the questions it poses, but overall it's not a pretty picture. Here's an excerpt:

You have one subject who had his siblings put a hit out on him (unsuccessful, I should note). Were there any other depths of human depravity this subject exposed that surprised you?

That was a winner named Buddy who, indeed, had his siblings try to kill him. Once was through a hit man. Buddy also told us that the bolts were taken out of his car and that he was given arsenic twice. And while this gives the movie some really wretched moments, I tried hard to not make a film that just fed into an audience's built-in sense of resentment toward people who had won money they didn't deserve...

A Life Without Compromise

Abby RapoportMar 26, 2012
(Flickr/Zoran Veselinovic)

Thanks to a nasty bug last week, I'm still emptying my South by Southwest notebook. 

A documentary about a musician's fall is sure to be particularly powerful stuff at a festival known largely for launching bands to stardom. Perhaps that's part of what made Beware of Mr. Baker such a favorite at South by Southwest, where it won the coveted Grand Jury Award. The documentary, after all, tells the tale of talented, rakish drummer Ginger Baker, who has finally become old, sitting at home in South Africa, low on cash, short on friends, and far removed from his heyday.

Lost Opportunities

Jamelle BouieMar 25, 2012
(AP Photo / Moviestore / Rex Features)

Unlike the last young adult sensation, Twilight, The Hunger Games is actually easy to understand for those who missed the initial hype. The novel, by Suzanne Collins, takes place in a future, post-apocalyptic North America, where war and ecological disaster have left the population under the control of a totalitarian government. To maintain order, the leaders of Panem—from the Latin panem et circenses, or bread and circuses—have instituted an annual contest, where 24 young people ("tributes") are chosen from each of the twelve districts, and forced to fight to the death in a contest that is some combination of Lord of the Flies, The Most Dangerous Game, and the cult Japanese film Battle Royale.

Hell's Belles

Tracking the teen heroines of the new dystopian thrillers

Abby McGanney NolanMar 15, 2012
(Photo courtesy of Scholastic)

Like the flu virus, the genre of dystopic novels for young adults has many strains. The one featuring a teenage girl battling for her life got a massive boost in the fall of 2008, when the first volume of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy was published. Collins’s franchise has more than 23.5 million books in print and a movie adaptation due out next week, while new entries in the genre keep pouring forth, eagerly welcomed by fans and Hollywood. 

A Nightstick Turned into a Song

Two new books and a documentary cue up the soundtrack of the black-power movement.

Josh KunMar 15, 2012
(Courtesy of Louverture Films)

In January, President Barack Obama made his singing debut on the stage of Harlem’s Apollo Theater. During a campaign fundraising speech, he leaned into the microphone, gently slid his State of the Union baritone up to a whispery falsetto, and nailed the opening line from “Let’s Stay Together,” the Al Green soul classic that has melted hearts and warmed sheets since its release in 1971. “I-I-I-I, I’m so in love with you,” Obama cooed. The video of his impromptu performance has logged more than four million views, and the song has become an unofficial re-election theme. Obama’s rendition is available as a ringtone; inevitably, Green showed up to sing it at an event in February.

McCain's Oops Moment

Clare MaloneMar 09, 2012

Nothing quite so aptly conveys the charade of practiced authenticity in our national politics as the four-star hotel room on a long-slog campaign run—a mess of tasseled drapes, ample sofas, and crisp white sheets all straining in hollow imitation of home.

This Is Not a Movie Review

Iranian director Jafar Panahi's latest film revels in the irony of making a film about being forbidden to make a film.

Noy ThrupkaewMar 01, 2012

Director Jafar Panahi appears on screen for almost the entire duration of his latest film—making breakfast, getting bad news from his lawyer, staging an impromptu read-through of a script the Iranian government has forbidden him to shoot. Panahi is not directing, though—at least he’s not supposed to be. As his cameraman and collaborator reminds him, even yelling “cut” would be considered an offense. The resulting footage is just as ontologically coy. The feature, which makes its U.S. debut this week, is titled This Is Not a Film.

A Taste for Mediocrity

Why does Hollywood give us bad movies? Because we love them.

Tom CarsonFeb 28, 2012
(AP Photo/Joel Ryan)

Slumped in your chair as life's meaninglessness washed over you like lava made of Brad Pitt's bubble gum, you may have zoned out for the most tattletale bit of Sunday night's Oscars telecast. (If you just skipped the whole shebang, well—more power to you, Secretary Clinton.

The Prospect Goes to the Oscars

Here are our reviews of some of this year's big hits so you can catch up before Sunday's show. 

The EditorsFeb 24, 2012

Have you made your Oscar picks for this Sunday's Academy Awards broadcast yet? No fear, we've collected all our reviews of this year's nominated films so you can cram before the big show, and pass off Tom Carson's less-than-effusive thoughts on Midnight in Paris as your own (if you so choose). Don't forget to check in next week for our special Oscars-themed Vox and Friends podcast!

 

Woody Allen's Excellent Adventure

By Tom Carson

Midnight in Paris is nothing more than a dilettante's guide to the City of Lights.

In the running for: Best Picture; Best Original Screenplay

The Lorax, Soon to Infect Theaters With Insidious Propaganda

Paul WaldmanFeb 23, 2012

I have a friend, a strong environmentalist and all-around lefty of the kind your average conservative talk show host would just love to punch in the face, who has a Lorax tattooed on his shoulder. He got it 10 or 15 years ago, and his ink of Dr. Seuss' exasperated little dude who tries in vain to protect the Truffula trees never fails to win admiration from any and all who see it.

But now Hollywood has come along, and using its impeccable logic -- Kids love Dr. Seuss; kids love movies; ergo, kids will love Dr. Seuss movies! -- has finally gotten around to making a full-length version of The Lorax. There's a mixed record on Dr. Seuss movies (Horton Hears a Who, not bad; The Cat In the Hat, a soul-sucking crime against nature), but particularly with The Lorax, a rather bleak morality tale with only a couple of characters, they'd have to cram in a whole bunch of humans and events that Dr. Seuss never dreamed of to get it to 90 action-packed minutes. And did they ever; Grist's David Roberts, upon seeing the trailer called it a "rainbow-barf monstrosity."

In any case, the fact that they've made a movie out of the enviro-rhyming book has made conservatives predictably outraged. Lou Dobbs, always ready to explore new frontiers in bloviating jackassery, sees a conspiracy linking Hollywood, Occupy Wall Street, and the Obama White House, pushing not just the environmental extremism of The Lorax, but also the socialist redistributionism of the children's classic The Borrowers (in its form as a new film called The Secret World of Arietty) because the tiny little beings steal things like sugar cubes from humans, whom Dobbs believes represent the 1 percent. Seriously.

But as David Haglund says, of course The Lorax is propaganda -- that's just how Dr. Seuss intended it, and you couldn't make a Lorax movie that wasn't. Should that bother us?...

A Homeric D'oh

The Simpsons celebrates a television milestone but where has all the edge gone?

Amanda MarcotteFeb 22, 2012
(Flickr/wallyg)

Watching The Simpsons now is like watching the movie version of the Broadway show based on John Waters’ classic Hairspray. The form is the same, but the spirit just isn’t there. When the 500th episode of the show aired Sunday night, I couldn’t be bothered to care. The main problem is that the show jumped the shark more than a decade ago and, while it still manages to pop off plenty of laugh lines, it lacks the satirical heart that made it truly groundbreaking when it made its debut 23 years ago.

The Help's Same Old Story

The film boasts Oscar-worthy performances but spotlights black exploitation in Hollywood.

Zerlina MaxwellFeb 13, 2012
(AP Photo/Dale Robinette)

Much has been written about The Help’s whitewashing of American history in the Jim Crow South. The film’s revisionist plot follows the efforts of an altruistic white savior, played by Emma Stone, as she writes a book about the daily lives of maids in 1963 Mississippi. Certain realities of the time, including the death of prominent civil-rights leader Medgar Evers, are brushed aside, glossed over, or completely misinterpreted.

Pages