The Final Take with Parker Mott

Rating: 14A – Coarse Language, Disturbing Content
Run Time: 113 minutes

Robert De Niro is a mystical presence in "Red Lights".

“Red Lights” wages a philosophical war between supernatural and natural laws, and begs the question whether the former defies the logic of the latter. Is there something beyond the veil that exceeds our worldly understanding? John Locke believed we must predicate truth on mental perceptions, whereas the later David Hume was a skeptic to the validity of human knowledge and sensory perception. For me, the supernatural is adjacent to the realm of objectivity: both may exist, but they predominate a state outside immanent human existence. (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…)

2 Stars out of 4
(129 minutes)

Holmes (Downey, Jr.) and Watson (Law) on the prowl in "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows".

If only Arthur Conan Doyle could see Mr. Sherlock Holmes now. Jacked up, scrappy, Downey-ed and in a sequel. Sure, the works of Sherlock Holmes contained numerous stories, but here’s a modern-day popcorn flick that’s all for the box-office green. At least it would seem. Yes, there’s another investigation for Holmes and his audience to conduct, but this time it bears a mystery without any mysteries. (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…)

2 Stars out of 4
(112 minutes)

Rachel Weisz is the only bright light in the basic The Whistleblower.

There is something to be said about great performances, and especially ones that cannot fulfill the dreary dullness of its film. The Whistleblower is an example of this curiosity, where it takes a venerable actress and dips her in material that doesn’t commit like she does. Too bad; it’s a fascinating story that demands a voice in public discourse. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(121 minutes)

Mitchell Haven (or Monte Hellman?) is the director of Road To Nowhere, the film within a film.

Monte Hellman’s Road To Nowhere is what postmodernists call “complex narrative.” Boy, is it complex. Think of Road To Nowhere like a ruffled ball of string that, since it is only one string, will lead to one end. The question is how well is it wounded up to make it a disorienting yet coherent yarn? It’s the classic film within a film within a film that is part making-of featurette beclouded in a dream state. (continue reading…)