The Final Take with Parker Mott

2.5 Stars out of 4
(109 minutes)

"Outrage": Another victim at the mercy of the gun – us.

If you’ve seen a Takeshi Kitano film, you will understand when I say he makes the word “subtle”  melodramatic. What I mean is Kitano has always preferred to surpass the simple gestures of subtleties and create his own definition of low-key. I highly doubt you will enjoy your first Kitano film. They embody premises that should be knee-deep in Tarantino-esque violence (note: Kitano hates Tarantino’s films), but are really cautiously calm. It’s like thinking you are walking into a foul storm only to receive a gentle, humid breeze. (continue reading…)

This is generally my expression when writing this list.

I was talking to an acquaintance of mine the other day. I asked him what were the worst films he had seen this year. He drew blank, and then darted back at me that he doesn’t have time for bad movies. If he hears a movie is awful, he will shrewdly avoid it. Apt logic. I don’t know, I’ve often asked myself why I (sometimes) go to movies even when I knew I am in for a cascade of crap. It’s not that I want to hate a film to feel better about myself – as a filmmaker and film critic.  It’s that bad cinema is just as educational as good or even masterful cinema. It tells you what not to do, and how to not do it. We need to be grateful for these films. If not, the world would be too perfect. And who likes perfect? So here we are with my list… (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(91 minutes)

Rutger Hauer is the famous renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder in "The Mill and the Cross."

Lech Majewski’s The Mill and the Cross is a film that will either absorb or repel you. Either way, there is no doubting the film’s quiet, uncompromising, and meditative style that brings art – quite literally – to life. It lives within the cruel yet gracefully alive Flanders in Pieter Bruegel’s famous renaissance painting “The Procession to Cavalry.” If you did not understand the nouns of that last sentence, this art piece will not make room for clarifications. (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(84 minutes)

Always smiling: Bill Cunningham with his beloved camera.

Here is a modest documentary that transcends its modesty. It’s called Bill Cunningham New York, a character portrait of a man I would love to be friends with but doubt he would ever be friends with me. This is not the fault of myself, but simply Bill Cunningham is a man, and an enigmatic one at that, who lives life for work not pleasure. On the subject of friends, for Bill it is like trying to solve a math problem. He knows there is a logic to it, but he doesn’t get it. (continue reading…)

1.5 Stars out of 4
(106 minutes)

Cars 2: a franchise that curiously felt the need to go for another spin.

Cars 2 is like returning to an old, rusty automobile only to notice, right when turning the ignition, it is just as clunky – if not, more. In other words, before the plot’s wheels of Cars 2 even start turning you can tell this franchise was, and still is, out of gas. Okay, the car puns stop here. But so does the fun. (continue reading…)

2.5 Stars out of 4
(113 minutes)

Albert Nobbs (Close) and Helen (Wasikowska) finish up their "date" in "Albert Nobbs".

I regret to say that, before watching Albert Nobbs, I have only seen one Glenn Close movie. It was Fatal Attraction. Jumping ahead to Albert Nobbs shows I have seen Close at her most outrageous and, here, her most subtle as Albert Nobbs. A name, you would expect, suits a man but not here. Nobbs is a woman with unreachable dreams, living a tragedy of circumstance. The hardest part about being a dreamer is that you want to live a life that is far beyond reality. (continue reading…)

1 Star out of 4
(81 minutes)

The sitter and the sats. The audience is squished under.

I’ve seen my fair share of tired comedies but The Sitter is the last yawn. A lousy, insulting, and lethargic farce without a lick of laughter. But its deeper, painfully stirring tragedy is that it is directed by David Gordon Green, the ever-so talented man behind George Washington, Snow Angels, and Undertow. Now with Your Highness and this, he might just find two slots on my list of the worst films this year. And, I know: most of you liked this director’s Pineapple Express too – but it is partly the reason for this mess. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(132 minutes)

All over a stinking Blackberry (not really). Ethan Hunt (Cruise) gets a birds eye view of Dubai in "Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol."

Whenever I mention Mission Impossible to a particular friend, he prompts me with the same joke: a man was at a theatre seeing the first Mission Impossible. During the uproarious climax when Ethan Hunt tethers a helicopter to a train only to drag it down from above and squeeze into a dark tunnel, a woman in the audience scoffed: “Oh, this is so fake.” Then, the man turned to her and chirped, “well, this isn’t Mission Happens All the Time!”. I guess you sort of had to be there. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(158 minutes)

Rooney Mara is notorious computer hacker Lisbeth Salander.

In an opening scene to David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a man introduces Lisbeth Salander to another with a careful hesitation: “I don’t know if you’ll like her, sir. She’s… different.” So goes our feelings – equally strange, gun-shy, and apprehensive – in the commercialized remake of an adaptation The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a film of further proof that mainstream audiences refuse to read subtitles and hate any unfamiliar, un-Hollywood face. By now, they could be accused of xenophobia. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(107 minutes)

The sacred parchment scroll beheld by our heroes in "The Adventures of Tintin."

If you thought Indiana Jones was your archetypal adventure tale, you haven’t seen nothing yet. With The Adventures of Tintin, director Steven Spielberg does not want to fly but soar across this world in the mighty, vividly alive motion capture animation – but not the kind that made Scrooge look a few wrinkles shy of a hag in A Christmas Carol. This time, this world truly moves, with characters who glide swiftly with natural human movements. It’s uncanny to see reality mesh with “cartoon.” (continue reading…)