The Final Take with Parker Mott

3 Stars out of 4
(94 minutes)

Care Failure and director Bruce McDonald pose for Hard Core Logo II.

Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo II is a sequel redeeming its predecessor. It’s an example of what Jean-Luc Godard said on film criticism: “one way to criticize a movie is to make another movie.” In actuality, Hard Core Logo is an in-your-face Canadian classic, but in Hard Core Logo II’s fictional world it’s a complete outrage of cinema, from a director – McDonald (his fictional version) – that went so far to display the suicide of his main character, Joe Dick, on camera for the closing money shot of the film. Therefore, Hard Core Logo II is not quite a sequel. It’s the criticism of Hard Core Logo. (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(90 minutes)

Twixt is Coppola's return to gothic cinema in a purely experimental form. You've been warned.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt is a movie for novelists and filmmakers, but not audiences.

There’s no plot here, little room for character, and hardly any need for a sensible conclusion. This is Coppola’s retreat to his early days when he worked for Roger Corman doing gothic horror, and his memories it seem couldn’t be any fonder. The result is a fun, brisk, and perversely dark yet highly skilled piece of filmmaker by a once-declared master. Twixt is an excellent return to a previous form from a director who has long needed it. (continue reading…)

4 Stars out of 4
(133 minutes)

Billy Beane (Pitt) and Peter Brand (Hill) observe batting practice in Moneyball.

In Moneyball, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, told his team that baseball is a game of blackjack. Funny how the daring choices Beane made were like blackjack too: he had cards in his hands but who knows if they would add up to twenty-one. Regardless, every deal Beane would double down and spare the insurance. Moneyball is about the cards dealt after and Beane’s uncertainty if they amounted to a blackjack. (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(105 minutes)

Jacob Wysocki gives a great, small performance in Terri.

Terri is a great display of adolescence. It doesn’t quite understand it, so in a strange way it does. It looks but doesn’t feel like the traditional coming-of-age drama about a young misfit. Everything, from performances to direction, seem unparalleled to its likely comparisons Precious and Fish Tank. This isn’t a film about a boy already coping with clinical depression. Yes, Terri is overweight, friendless, shy, and sluggish. Yet, he is proud of it. (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(100 minutes)

Ryan Gosling homages Alain Delon in "Drive".

Drive is a samurai movie. It’s about the preparation, the meditation, and the grace of the execution. It features a pretty boy Canadian actor, Ryan Gosling, here no longer at the mercy of teenage hearts. The hunky actor is given no name, but the still waters of his personality run deep. What does he do? He drives. His character does not leak with motivation, but he seems intent to have a purpose. His scorpion jacket, toothpick, vehicle, and leather gloves that grasp the wheel in front of him suggest what defines him on the outside, but who knows what boils beneath. (continue reading…)

2 Stars out of 4
(82 minutes)

Jeff (Segal) and Pat (Helms) causing a fuss in Jeff, Who Lives At Home.

The weird thing about Jay and Mark Duplass’s Jeff, Who Lives At Home is that we don’t see Jeff (Jason Segal) live at home. Okay, besides the first shot: Jeff sits on his home toilet, brooding about the signs that come and go across the world. He analyzes M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, quite perceptively. His favourite character is the little girl whose fear of glasses of water ultimately saved her family from tragedy. This is key foreshadowing to Jeff, Who Lives At Home but it doesn’t support the film’s empty feelings of underdevelopment. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(88 minutes)

Designer Holly Conrad presents her talent after winning a prize at Comic-Con.

Here is a documentary that you will have trouble resisting. It’s called Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope; its task is bringing energy and inspiration to the far away galaxy of Comic-Con. But Star Wars puns aside, A Fan’s Hope is a nimble trot through the big yearly convention and, as a result, profits more as light stuff for documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. But then again most of his films are. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(106 minutes)

In "Contagion", human feeling is detached from Soderbergh's technique. The result is a cold, desensitized chill.

Contagion is a film that leaves you unclean and searching for the closest sanitizer. Not because it is violent or vulgar, but because it focuses on the germs and bacteria we transmit on a daily basis. It features characters who move about their environments unsteadily, not touching doorknobs or shaking hands. As for the audience, you won’t want to take a bathroom break. Not because the film is always entertaining, though it mostly is. But because you won’t want to flush the toilet, wash your hands, and touch the faucet. For this film, wear gloves. (continue reading…)

2 Stars out of 4
(96 minutes)

Violet and Daisy unload on a target. The film itself shoots blanks.

Violet & Daisy proves what French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard once said is true: “all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” Well, make it two girls and two guns. But Godard left out whether the movie would be good or not, and Violet & Daisy is not. (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(106 minutes)

From left: Bruce Sinofsky, Damien Echols, and Joe Berlinger.

In my reviews of the first Paradise Lost documentaries I noted that I was unsure if these films would conclude on triumph or tragedy. One calamity had already stormed through West Memphis, Arkansas and that was the brutal murders of the eight year-old boy scouts Christopher Byers, Steven Branch, and Michael Moore on May 5, 1993. But instead of searching for justice, the West Memphis courts jumped to conclusions, replacing a tragedy with another tragedy. Under ridiculously sketchy evidence Damien Echols (18), Jason Baldwin (16), and Jessie Misskelly (17) were sentenced to multiple life sentences – Echols on death row. I can never look justice straight in the eyes after that. (continue reading…)