Out of the Furnace
Crazy Heart, the Oscar-winning directorial debut of actor-turned-filmmaker Scott Cooper, told a story of small-town people with dwindling prospects who, against all odds, achieve a level of grace. It...
View ArticleThe Book Thief
The Book Thief has touched off a mini-debate about whether the world needs more Holocaust films. Yet nobody has asked the truly pressing question: Does the world need more movies that exhort young...
View ArticleAnti-Christmas Movie: White Reindeer
Some people seek out Christmas movies around the holidays. And others seek out anti-Christmas movies. Those in the latter category may want to drop in on White Reindeer, the latest drama from Brooklyn...
View ArticleAmerican Hustle
How apropos that the con artist in David O. Russell’s new film has a sideline selling forgeries. American Hustle plays like an imitation of Scorsese. As with many knock-offs, the resemblance to the...
View ArticleSaving Mr. Banks
Let this just be said: Mary Poppins forever. P.L. Travers’ magical nanny is one of the strangest and most memorable figures in children’s lit, an unsentimental drill sergeant of a woman who introduces...
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Kisonak and Harrison at the Movies 2013
RICK KISONAK: What better place than our year-end wrap-up to note that in 2013 the end itself proved a major trend? I don’t know what was in the pop-culture water (global warming, the NSA, the Jonas...
View ArticleAugust: Osage County
I hope your holidays were jolly. When the offices of Seven Days shutter during the festive season to give its staff a well-earned break, it’s the only week of the year I don’t have a deadline to meet....
View ArticleInside Llewyn Davis
When writer-directors consistently produce work as strong as that of brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, audiences may be tempted to overanalyze their every film as a Definitive Statement. No wonder, then,...
View ArticleLone Survivor
Regular readers will recall that I’ve found it fun on occasion to play a little game called “What If They’d Had a Cellphone?” So many movie catastrophes could have been avoided had the story taken...
View ArticleHer
We’ve changed in the past decade in ways we don’t fully comprehend. More and more of us interact more comfortably with the tiny internet portals we carry everywhere than we do with people. Yet it’s a...
View ArticleIllegal, Iranian-Directed Film This Is Not a Film Makes Its Way to Middlebury
The brief closing credits of Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb’s 2011 semi-documentary This Is Not a Film may well be the key to understanding this cryptic, fascinating work. Those credits inform...
View ArticleShort Takes on Film: MountainTop Film Fest; Inequality for All; Noam Chomsky...
Like your movies with sides of earnestness and activism? It’s time once again for the annual MountainTop Film Festival, which showcases narrative and documentary films devoted to human rights issues....
View ArticleUVM Screens Labor-Themed Film Series
Do you know the last line of Martin Ritt’s 1976 comedic drama The Front? According to David Jenemann, director of film and television studies at the University of Vermont, it’s one of the greatest...
View ArticleThe Invisible Woman
“The original fault,” John Berryman mused in the prologue to his Sonnets, “was whether wickedness was soluble in art.” I mention this because it’s essentially the question posed by Ralph Fiennes in his...
View ArticleJack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
There’s a certain kind of movie, often released in January, that inspires a certain kind of unencouraging praise. Perhaps you’ve heard people say, “Well, it wasn’t brilliant, but I just felt like a...
View ArticleShort Takes on Film: Activist Documentaries
“Climate change is no longer just a consequence of the Industrial Revolution. It is a crime against humanity,” says one of the talking heads featured in a new documentary called The Wisdom to Survive:...
View ArticleUnmanned: America's Drone Wars
Robert Greenwald makes documentaries. He also makes waves. And enemies. In the capital of this country, there are seriously powerful people who’d doubtless love to see him come to harm. And they’re the...
View ArticleI, Frankenstein
How I wish I could say that I, Frankenstein is a work of unsung genius and not exactly what you think it is. Namely, a film in which once-respected actor Aaron Eckhart takes off his shirt, grimaces to...
View ArticleLabor Day
The latest from mega-successful writer-director Jason Reitman had all kinds of buzz back in October and was slated for release in the prestigious Christmas Day slot. Given Reitman’s track record —...
View ArticleThat Awkward Moment
The classic way to rip on a lackluster comedy is to claim that you only laughed at the outtakes played during the end credits. Exaggeration, perhaps, but in the case of That Awkward Moment, I can...
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