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FilmCatcher5
FilmCatcher 5: Each week, one of our curators chooses five films we can’t stop obsessing about. ...
Multiplex: The SpiritMovies (and specifically the film-noir genre) have done wonders for the career of geeky comic-book artist turned Sin City director Frank Miller. But what has Miller given back to the cinema? RoboCop 3? Zack Snyder’s 300? We suppose, as penance for critics’ mixed reception of The Dark Knight, that Harry ... read morePosted on 12/29/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Arthouse: Theater of WarIf you don’t know squat about brainy Weimar playwright Bertolt Brecht, political engage and theorist of audience alienation, then consider this behind-the-scenes doc a lively primer, with Meryl Streep in performative-instructor mode. Mother Courage is one of Brecht’s most famous works, and a lot more complex than it appears at ... read morePosted on 12/29/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
DVD: Woman on the BeachHow does this plot strike you: A manipulative film director vacationing at a beach resort meets two women, each of whom unlocks in him some disquieting self-revelations, which of course become raw material for his script-in-progress about miracles and “the soul.” Hong Sang-soo’s intriguing study of male hostility, aggression, and ... read morePosted on 12/29/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Online: WaspFor a short film, Andrea Arnold’s Oscar-winning Wasp packs quite a wallop. Nathalie Press is riveting as Zoe, a chronically stressed, emotionally desperate single mother of five living in abject poverty in a Dartford, England housing project. The film’s tense, harried energy contributed much to Arnold’s equally great follow-up, Red ... read morePosted on 12/29/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
TV: The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. TWritten and set-designed by the beloved author of Green Eggs and Ham, who also wrote lyrics for some of the film’s outré, oh-so-Seussy songs, this oddball live-action fairy tale concerns Bart, a boy who dreams he’s trapped in a nightmare world and forced by the evil Dr. T to play ... read more Posted on 12/29/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Multiplex: The Curious Case of Benjamin ButtonWho wouldn’t want to see a big-budget Hollywood movie about an infant born with the physique of an 80-year-old midget who lives life backward? Adapted from an F. Scott Fitzgerald tale and directed by a guy best known for two smart, gruesome thrillers (Se7en, Zodiac) and a gleefully anarchic fuck ... read morePosted on 12/22/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Arthouse: Waltz with BashirIf the snarling, salivating demon-dog sequence that opens this animated cine-memoir doesn’t catch you in the throat, then move right along, pal. There’s nothing to see here. Israeli filmmaker and army veteran Ari Folman lost his memory after the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, so he set out to find and ... read morePosted on 12/22/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
DVD: BagheadThe Duplass brothers are funny and charming guys, kind of like mumblecore frat boys who never tipped over to the Dark Side (a/k/a into Swanbergian self-obsession). Here, they send a group of wanna-be indie actors into the woods to cook up a horror-movie script. Chad, the paunchy one, wants Michelle, ... read morePosted on 12/22/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Online: Requiem for a Dream:Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler is in theaters now and high on the list for awards-season honorifics, which should wash clean away any unpleasant memories of his monumentally stupid mystical epic, The Fountain. But this nightmarishly satirical film about addiction found Aronofsky working in a different sensory register, mustering some striking ... read more Posted on 12/22/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
TV: Ed GeinSo it’s Christmas Day, and you just can’t take another gather-round-the-telly family viewing of A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life. Fuck Zuzu’s petals! Yeah, we hear you. What to watch, what to watch... Well, we suggest you unsociable Scrooges sneak upstairs—or better—down to the basement and sink your ... read more Posted on 12/22/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Multiplex: Nothing Like the HolidaysNo, there really is nothing like the holidays. There’s nothing like mass-market Christmas films, either, and there’s nothing like sit-com clichés thrown up on a big screen, and there’s nothing like Hollywood’s infantilizing idea of family, black, white, or boricua. There’s nothing like John Leguizamo or Alfred Molina or Freddy ... read morePosted on 12/15/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Arthouse: The ClassIn America, our classroom dramas are as idealistic (Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me) as they are slick, stylized, and grossly misrepresentative of youth (Dead Poets Society, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). In France, where everyone has a slightly more intellectual bent, they have a different approach. Or at least Palme ... read morePosted on 12/15/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
DVD: Bottle RocketTo be honest, we can take or leave Wes Anderson. Sure, his mise en scène is as eye-pleasingly fey as his dandyish attire, and the guy has uncannily flawless taste in analog rock music. But the wall-to-wall quirk? Not so much. That’s why it’s so refreshing to turn back the ... read morePosted on 12/15/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Online: Grizzly Bear - KnifeIf Matthew Barney collaborated with the Quay Brothers on a rock-music video set in a Martian desert, it might look something like this. Weird and artfully grotesque, in other words. Grizzly Bear is a strange little band from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the inventive artist-animator duo Encyclopedia Pictura has crafted an ... read morePosted on 12/15/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
TV: Bright FutureSundance Channel, Wednesday, December 17, 1pm Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Cure) isn’t related to the other Kurosawa, but he’s a force of cinema in his own right. Though his brainy, psychological horror films often contain elements of the supernatural, they are studies, in a sense, of the forces that alienate individuals ... read more Posted on 12/15/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Multiplex: The Day the Earth Stood StillBecause it just makes sense, doesn’t it? Keanu Reeves has been playing an alien ever since he crash-landed on the set of River’s Edge, pretending to be a drug-addled teen zombie. Whether he’s calling himself Johnny Utah or Johnny Mnemonic, or hamming it up as Matrix avatar Neo, Reeves has ... read morePosted on 12/08/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Arthouse: Wendy and LucyImagine how quickly the movie producer’s eyes went stone dead when he heard a breathless pitch for this low-key film, about “a girl and her dog.” Luckily, Old Joy helmer Kelly Reichardt found her producing partner in the person of actor/indie-horror auteur Larry Fessenden, who makes a pop-up appearance in ... read morePosted on 12/08/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
DVD: Irma VepSorry, Twilight groupies. Maggie Cheung is not a vampire. But in this cheeky po-mo satire on self-indulgent filmmakers and the industry that coddles them, Olivier Assayas put Cheung (who’d soon become his wife) in a cat suit and sent her scrambling across the rooftops of Paris. The idea: a washed-up ... read morePosted on 12/08/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Online: Chris Doyle: OrientationsPerhaps the world’s only celebrity cinematographer, Australian lenser Chris Doyle is a household name in Hong Kong, where his longtime collaboration with Wong Kar-wai, poet of doomed romanticism, is legend. Doyle is a also a notorious fixture in the Asian tabloids for his raucous drinking habits and penchant for nuzzling ... read morePosted on 12/08/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
TV: The Taking of Pelham One Two ThreeThursday, 12/11, 2am, TCM When a subway car is held for ransom by killer Robert Shaw, only one transit cop is up to the task of running him down: Walter Matthau. Somehow, Walt makes his bumbling shlub shtick a thing of suspenseful beauty in this 1974 thriller, which Tony Scott ... read more Posted on 12/08/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Multiplex: Cadillac Records“Sex had a sound.” Yessiree, Trailer Voice Man, and her name was Beyoncé. Frankly, this Oscar-baiting biopic of Chess Records founder Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody) has too many big-name personalities (Jeffrey Wright, Mos Def, Cedric the Entertainer) playing too flippin’ many R&B legends (Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Big Willie Dixon) ... read morePosted on 12/02/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Arthouse: Nobel SonWhat the world needs right now isn’t a hero, but someone who can parse this loopy, vicious, anything-goes film, part head case, part Maximum Entertainment Vehicle. It’s as if some mad scientist fed genre films into a cinematic super-collider, spliced in some clichéd gags (aren’t poetry readings and academic soirees ... read morePosted on 12/02/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
DVD: White DogWe’ll always love ’80s heartthrob Kristy McNichol, and not just because of her unwholesome turn as a summer-camp virgin who loses it to Matt Dillon in Little Darlings. Sure, her film work was mostly an embarrassment (seen The Pirate Movie lately?), and once Dynamite! magazine stopped calling, TV was probably ... read morePosted on 12/02/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
Online: JunktopiaChris Marker is best known, perhaps, for his landmark sci-fi short Le Jetée, the inspiration for Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys. This mini-doc, a wordless tour of a beach on the outskirts of San Francisco where anonymous artists have fashioned sculpture from tidally borne flotsam and jetsam, finds the French essay-film ... read more Posted on 12/02/2008 by FilmCatcher5 
TV: KeaneWhat indie up-and-comer wouldn’t go a little crazy if he made a film with Steven Soderbergh starring Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhall that, after the production had wrapped, was unintentionally destroyed forever? That’s what happened to Lodge Kerrigan (Clean, Shaven), who’s always had a particularly strong empathy for distressed, emotionally ... read more Posted on 12/02/2008 by FilmCatcher5 |
