The Final Take with Parker Mott

Michael Shannon is "The Iceman".

“How do you feel about the people you killed?”
“I don’t.”
- HBO’s “The Iceman: Confessions of a Mafia Hitman”, 2001

That is the cold, remorseless response of Richard Kuklinski, the contract killer at the brutal centre of Ariel Vromen’s The Iceman. The title comes from Kuklinski’s media monicker, and while the name does not fall short of sensationalism it borders on dead accuracy too. He never blinked looking down the barrel of a gun, and he had even fewer reservations about pulling its trigger. (continue reading…)

Jeff Buckley (Badgely) tributing his father and releasing his voice to the world.

We all know the saying “like father, like son”, but it’s hard to imagine the pressures of being the son who had to be “like” Tim Buckley, the late musician whose legacy left an indelible mark on the folk music scene and also produced 9 studio albums, 8 live albums, and innumerable compilations. The son was Jeff Buckley, a skinny, pallid, and rumply-haired musician who in his early career was recognized for uncannily resembling his father. (continue reading…)

FDR (Bill Murray) has a good time – and we don't – in "Hyde Park on Hudson".

Dealing with a political personage like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it’s peculiar that Hyde Park on Hudson staidly limits the drama to the little bits of business at a small and sumptuous estate in the bucolic Hyde Park in upstate New York where the 32nd president of the United Stated does little else but drive his 1936 Ford Phaeton in daisy fields and guzzle dry gin in his timber-furnished quarters. The landscape itself is Granny-Smith green; the trees and hedges nestle around the mansion adding texture and beauty. In the distant future, I bet curmudgeonly Frank from this year’s comedy Robot & Frank lived near here. (continue reading…)

Sir Anthony Hopkins is Alfred Hitchcock.

Hitchcock (99m)  – ***
The Girl (91m) – **1/2

Alfred Hitchcock was a droll filmmaker who mastered the vast landscape of genre films, by prying into their tropes and deflowering them with perversities. He’s a man meant for the cinema, but it’s questionable if the cinema is meant for him. I mean that in terms of a starring role, because he preferred to flash before our eyes. He’s known of course for the quick cameos, most inventively in North by Northwest and Family Plot, but his brevity I believe was for a reason. (continue reading…)

Lincoln roams the ruins of Petersburg at the climax of the American Civil War in Steven Spielberg's masterful "Lincoln".

Lincoln is a bold and monumental achievement in filmmaking craftsmanship, and solidifies two irrefutable outcomes: Daniel Day-Lewis will win Best Actor at the Oscars for his role as the United States’s 16th president, and Janusz Kaminski will also take the Academy’s accolade for Cinematography. Both add depth, intrigue, and beauty to what may be Steven Spielberg’s finest, or at least most assured film. Its humanity and politics are remarkably brilliant. (continue reading…)

Rating: 14a – Frightening Scenes, Gory Scenes, Graphic Violence
Run Time: 105 minutes

What If I were to tell you Manifest Destiny wasn’t waged by the Democrats, but vampires? And its opponents weren’t the Whigs, but merely one man: Abraham Lincoln…the, uh, Vampire Hunter? No, honestly it’s true. In 19th century America, the vampires wanted to expand across the continent, spreading slavery into the global consciousness – along with fangs, vials of blood, and all that Bram Stoker stuff. (continue reading…)

1.5 Stars out of 4
(105 minutes)

Meryl Steep as Margaret Thatcher in the pedestrianly directed "The Iron Lady".

I have looked at several posters to The Iron Lady. All of them feature Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in closeup staring ahead, with a cold brazenness. Her gold hair is so round and complete it crowns itself, and her hand touching her cheek maintains her semblance of charm. But behind this pose is a tough cookie: Sinn Fein politician Danny Morrison described her as “the biggest bastard we have ever known.” Nevertheless, she remains as one of the most important political figures of the twentieth century. (continue reading…)

2.5 Stars out of 4
(99 minutes)

Michelle Williams is the icon Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe’s beauty was too complex, too fragile, too perfect that calling her a “sex symbol” seems to underestimate her presence. Always a sigh to beheld, Monroe was charmed by almost all the men who saw or knew her, but none were capable of handling her. She would often blow kisses like she wanted us all, but in reality no man did it for her. She went through three husbands, her last one famously the introverted savant Arthur Miller who left her and London because “she took out all the energy from him.” He needed to get back to reality, I guess. (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…)

3 Stars out of 4
(130 minutes)

Does he look like a hero? Eric Elmosnino is the iconic Serge Gainsbourg in "Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life".

The fundamental criticism of Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is in fact its praise: it is unable, or perhaps prefers not, to define who famous French singer of the 1960s Serge Gainsbourg really was. This result beholds not a dead end, but the heart of this fascinating biopic. The conclusion is that Serge smoked his Gitanes cigarettes (Marlboros weren’t around yet), painted with prolific obsession, and smacked the piano to…? The film works best in its uncertainty, as it allows its lead actor – Eric Elmosnino – to embody the performance with a defiant freedom. Serge, I think, would’ve wanted it that way. (continue reading…)