The Final Take with Parker Mott

3.5 Stars out of 4
(124 minutes)

Michael Shannon is excellent in "Take Shelter."

Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter is a quiet, chilling drama that exists entirely under your skin. With bold austerity, Michael Shannon delivers another performance that proves he is in control of his characters as they descend into madness. But is husband-father Curtis LaForche (that is Shannon) insane? In Hollywood films, this would be the most important question. But Take Shelter inserts fascinating subtleties within the seams of this question. With impending dread, the film captures a man’s apocalyptic delusions within a seemingly idyllic American suburb. (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(127 minutes)

Hugo (Butterfield) and Georges Méliès (Kingsley) share grins in Martin Scorsese's glorious 3D feat "Hugo".

Hugo is a remarkable feat of celebrating the history and power of cinema while flying across a seemingly sweet kid’s adventure. It will absorb film lovers, and probably dazzle young children as they enter the fully realized and alive visual world of a master – Martin Scorsese. While its story might not reach the heights of a great Pixar film, Hugo – regardless – feels like an experience. An escape into a world that is its own visual splendour. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(87 minutes)

Sitting in silence: a common act in "Putty Hill".

If something existed beyond the realm of naturalism, Putty Hill would be it. An archetype of its own verisimilitude – vivid, gentle, slow, and sad – as it looks and burrows deep in the milieu of Baltimore, Maryland. It’s about watching things unfold, and not necessarily engaging in them. The result? A polarizing embark: beautiful, glum, happy, joyless, thoughtful, and empty. I suspect, however, that all these feelings precipitate our characters, who wallow in their own divisive states of reality. (continue reading…)

2 Stars out of 4
(105 minutes)

Jessica Chastain, hot this year, in the dried-up "Texas Killing Fields".

Here is a film with foolproof material that ends up everything but successful. It’s called Texas Killing Fields, and it is directed by Michael Mann’s daughter Ami Canaan Mann who will be compared for the rest of her filmmaking days to the masterful work of her father’s. With her debut studying the torrid, desolate, and dangerous outdoors of Texas City, Texas, Ami Mann is already striding for the league of her father’s. The result is a sincere yet unsatisfactory first effort. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(96 minutes)

The "Garda" Boyle (Gleeson) has a kid informer in "The Guard."

To spin off a famous Billy Wilder quote, an actor wearing a guard suit you have nothing. But if he happens to be Brendan Gleeson, you’ve got a situation. Yes, Gleeson is really a piece of work who fills the role, literally, with the most lively deadpan. He’ll make you laugh anyway and anyhow, even by sipping for an elongated time on a milkshake. Oh, and he’s a Garda (not a “guard”), which is Gallic for policeman. So the title of this film has seriously lost something in translation. (continue reading…)

1.5 Stars out of 4
(110 minutes)

A repetitive action scene in "Immortals."

Immortals is an unholy mess that deserves nothing less than our wrath. The film does the impossible: it becomes a 300 ripoff, devoid of might, and you can forget the godliness. It’s another example of muscular actors spitting portentous dialogue for no reason other than to decapitate the foe in front of him. Sounds like fun? Sure, and so is being maimed. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(87 minutes)

Cyril (Donet) and Samantha (de France) share a moment in "The Kid with a Bike."

The bicycle must be one of the greatest character objects in cinema. It is more important to a man than his pride or family. It is forever reliable, always ready to be picked up and rode anywhere and everywhere. The bicycle represents the wheels of the everyman’s existence – without it he is nothing and without him it is nothing. They spin together. (continue reading…)

2 Stars out of 4
(89 minutes)

A Very Harold & Kumar (& Neil Patrick Harris!) 3D Christmas.

Now that it’s that time of the year again, the Harold & Kumar franchise is providing their seasons greetings. Six years after the Guantanamo Bay shenanigan, Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) have allegedly gone their separate ways – Harold the married businessman and Kumar the same-old loafer. Their reunion amounts to another foolhardy adventure through the Christmas eve night, containing some schemes that are naughty not nice, and of course Neil Patrick Harris is coming to town. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(137 minutes)

Leonardo DiCaprio is FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

J. Edgar Hoover, in the posters to his biographical drama J. Edgar, is exclaimed as the Most Powerful Man In the World. You wouldn’t know it though. So many of his accomplishments were done behind closed doors in the dark, densely lit halls of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Within his personality existed not a hero but a sad, hypocritical, and devious man who, by the age of 27, was appointed as the sixth director of the Bureau of Investigation (it became “FBI” in 1935). (continue reading…)

2.5 Stars out of 4
(111 minutes)

Kristen Scott Thomas is excellent in an unremarkable subplot in "Sarah's Key".

Sarah’s Key is a film that gets everything right but the story. It is based on the critically-acclaimed novel “Her Name was Sarah” by Tatiana de Rosnay, and I suspect – since I haven’t read the book – something got lost in translation. The flaw could be in the title. Since this is called “Sarah’s Key” and not “Her Name was Sarah” implies that this is directly about Sarah, and not the memory of her. Nevertheless, the film is more about the modern-day subplot and this, I’m afraid, doesn’t do the justice of its fascinating other half. (continue reading…)