All articles by Patrick Z McGavin – Page 4
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Reviews
Finishing the Game
Dir: Justin Lin. US. 2007. 93mins. Following his foray directing the studio assignments Annapolis and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Justin Lin exhibits a warmer, more personal touch with Finishing the Game, a clever though very thin divertissement about filmmaking, Asian cultural stereotypes and the iconic representation of ...
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Reviews
King of California
Dir/scr: Mike Cahill. US. 2007. 93mins. A bittersweet comic fable, Mike Cahill's debut feature King of California navigates a quixotic emotional register perched between fantasy and delusion that imagines a sweetly anarchic world where adolescent desire for normality and adult hope for grandeur clash by night. It features a lovely, ...
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Reviews
The Messengers
Dirs: Oxide and Danny Pang. US. 2007. 91mins. The studio debut of the gifted horror specialists Oxide and Danny Pang (The Eye , Bangkok Dangerous), The Messengers is a visually assured though dramatically flat ghost story about an endangered American family unaware their just purchased North Dakota farmhouse harbors a ...
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Reviews
Black Snake Moan
Craig Brewer: US: 2007Craig Brewer's third feature Black Snake Moan is about the redemption of sleaze, though it plays closer to a shotgun marriage of Baby Doll and Boxing Helena. Even more than Hustle & Flow, Brewer's new work is designed as a deliberate provocation that mixes like a Molotov ...
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Reviews
The Pool
Dir: Chris Smith. US. 2007. 106mins.In his second narrative feature The Pool, documentary film-maker Chris Smith (American Movie) considerably expands his range and thematic concerns. Working in Hindi, telling a low key, resonant story about an 18-year-old Indian boy's quest to break free of his disadvantaged origins, Smith is working ...
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Reviews
Once
Dir/scr: John Carney. Ireland. 2007. 88mins. The revelation of Sundance, John Carney's poetic third feature Once is a sublime and beautiful work that mediates feeling and desire. It's lyrical though substantial, beholden to the spirit and manner of the French New Wave, achieving a loose, spontaneous style that impressively binds ...
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Reviews
Four Sheets To The Wind
Dir/scr: Sterlin Harjo. US. 2007. 85mins.In Sterlin Harjo's debut feature, Four Sheets To The Wind, detailing the emotional and interior journey of a young, somewhat confused Native coming to terms with the death of his father, the young film-maker has carved out a limited though intoxicating piece of American regional ...
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Reviews
Waitress
Dir/Scr: Adrienne Shelly. US. 2007. 104minsThe third and final feature by Adrienne Shelly, who was murdered last aUTUMN, Waitress is a bittersweet, pungent reminder of the formidably smart and gracious touch she possessed in front of and behind the camera. The story of a small town pregnant woman who charmingly ...
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Reviews
Dedication
Dir: Justin Theroux. US. 2007. 112mins.After playing a malevolent director in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, actor Justin Theroux takes the plunge down the rabbit hole with Dedication, bringing an electric charge and furious energy to the story of a misanthropic writer of children's books whose professional pairing with a beautiful ...
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Reviews
Expired
Dir/scr: Cecilia Miniucchi. US. 2007. 110mins. 'I'm the most hated person in the world,' Samantha Morton's shy, emotionally withdrawn parking meter enforcer says at the opening of Expired, a title that proves unfortunately apt. The movie proves exhausting, obliterating patience, understanding or emotional conviction in its portrait of female desire, ...
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Reviews
Grace Is Gone
Dir/scr: James C Strouse. US. 2007. 92mins.The strengths and limitations of Grace Is Gone exist in conjunction with each other. Intimately conceived and scaled, the work gathers a cumulative emotional power in the plaintive, sharply muted performance by John Cusack as a Midwestern everyman who struggles to find the proper ...
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Reviews
Year of the Dog
Dir/Scr: Mike White. US. 2007. 98mins. Mike White's outre wit and malicious satirical imagination is shown to sometimes spectacular effect in Year of the Dog. It is an alternately strange, puzzling and highly peculiar directing debut about a woman whose private trauma, coupled with her professional failure and romantic disappointment, ...
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Reviews
The Savages
Dir/scr: Tamara Jenkins. US. 2007. 113mins. The story of a brother and sister forced to care for their mentally diminished father, Tamara Jenkins's second feature The Savages examines with sensitivity, intelligence and jolting observation the vicissitudes of suffering, loss and human frailty. It's a serious work sharpened by prickly humour, ...
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Reviews
The Good Shepherd
Dir: Robert De Niro. US. 2006. 165mins.Robert De Niro's secondfeature The Good Shepherd is afrequently absorbing, fascinating work that achieves its power through itsdeliberate sense of contradiction. Traversing 20th-century American foreignpolicy and Cold War politics, it refracts historical tensions through a singleperspective; the complex, emotionally harsh life of spymaster Edward ...
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Reviews
Home Of The Brave
Dir: Irwin Winkler. US.2006. 107mins.The first Hollywood film to directly address theemotional and political repercussions of the USoccupation of Iraq,Irwin Winkler's Home Of The Brave isa particularly blunt instrument that never satisfies as entertainment,effective storytelling or moral inquiry.Didactic and politicallyincoherent, its complex and emotionally risky scenariois the return of several ...
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Reviews
The Return
Dir: Asif Kapadia. US. 2006. 85mins.UK film-maker Asif Kapadia confirms the sharp directorial authority hedisplayed in The Warrior with The Return,a disarming and visually arresting work about a woman imperilled by herunsolved link to a murder 15 years earlier. Unfortunately, his craftsmanship isultimately stranded by a story that lacks the ...
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Reviews
Trapped Ashes
Dirs: Joe Dante, Monte Hellman, Ken Russell, SeanCunningham, John Gaeta. US/Canada/Japan. 2006. 105mins.Monte Hellman's superlative,evocative and genuinely moving Stanley'sGirlfriend is the standout contribution of Trapped Ashes, the horror anthology of four macabre vignettes alsodirected by Ken Russell, Sean Cunningham and John Gaeta.Financed by Japanesebroadcast concerns and shot in Vancouver, Los ...
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Reviews
Griffin & Phoenix
Dir: Ed Stone. US. 2006. 102mins.A theatrical remake of a 1976 TV movie, Ed Stone's featuredebut Griffin & Phoenix never movesbeyond the narrative and emotional restrictions of a story about two people in lovedying from cancer. Stone tries his best to avoid manipulation or sentiment, butthe story is almost entirely ...
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Reviews
Griffin & Phoenix
Dir: Ed Stone. US. 2006. 102mins.A theatrical remake of a 1976 TV movie, Ed Stone's featuredebut Griffin & Phoenix never movesbeyond the narrative and emotional restrictions of a story about two people in lovedying from cancer. Stone tries his best to avoid manipulation or sentiment, butthe story is almost entirely ...
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Reviews
School For Scoundrels
Dir: Todd Phillips. US.2006. 101mins.Todd Phillips' new comedy School For Scoundrels seems divided against itself, telling two interconnectedstories that rarely cohere. It treads on familiar territory recognisablethrough Phillips' previous work (Road Trip,Old School), enlivened here by thepeculiar love triangle ensnaring Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Hederand Jacinda Barrett.These talented actors givethe ...