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Reviews
on Inside Job
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 24 January 2011 02:26
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Inside Job, directed by Charles Ferguson, is another clever, engaging, and entertaining documentary of no especial aesthetic merit but is a well-crafted account of the recent financial crisis.
Much of the film is devoted to exposition and it thus eschews the gonzo mode of Michael Moore even as it features several confrontational interviews where the subjects are greatly embarrassed by the questions posed to them.
The film is especially noteworthy in at least two respects. First, Ferguson devotes several minutes to revealing the intellectual and ethical bankruptcy of academic economics. Second, the film doesn't shrink from exposing the collusion of the Democratic Clinton and -- especially and remarkably -- the Obama Administrations with the moneyed interests that precipitated the crisis.
The main weakness here is the final, naive exhortation for government reform, where everything preceding this in the film suggests that such a possibility is purely utopian.
Kevin's January 2011 - Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Saturday, 22 January 2011 10:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Jack Goes Boating
(Anchor Bay)
For his directorial debut, Philip Seymour Hoffman helmed this adaptation of Bob Glaudini’s play (which Hoffman starred in off-Broadway) about a loner who finds a soul mate amid the noisy clutter of New York. Hoffman directs sensitively, and his and Amy Ryan’s portrayals are first-rate; John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin-Vega (who both acted with Hoffmann in the play) are less impressive in the showier roles of Jack‘s closest friends.
The low-key romantic character study gets a good-looking, clean Blu-ray transfer; extras include deleted scenes and two on-set featurettes.
Cinefantastique Spotlight: THE GREEN HORNET
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 18 January 2011 05:00
- Written by Daniel Persons
It’s all change, baby, and with that in mind we’re experimenting with the format of the podcast. We’ve stripped away the news and theatrical and homevid release segments, combining them with our weekly Post-Mortem bull session to form what will be called the Cinefantastique Round Table Podcast. What’s left, now dubbed the Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast, will provide us with time to stretch out, unhinge our brains and mouths, and let the conversation about the week’s top release take us where it will.
Kevin's January Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Saturday, 15 January 2011 05:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week 
Lebanon
(Sony)
Samuel Maoz, who served in the Israeli army during the 1982 Lebanon war, used his experiences as the basis of this spellbinding debut about war through the eyes of fighting men. The film, which spends 90 minutes inside a tank, makes us as terrified and claustrophobic as the men: we feel the safety of being inside while not knowing the dangers outside.
Maoz individualizes these soldiers: when someone dies or is gravely wounded, we too are deeply affected. Lebanon doesn’t preach or editorialize, instead presenting war’s insanity as a given. The stunning Blu-ray transfer unerringly recreates Maoz’s daring compositions; the lone extra is a featurette, Notes on a War Film.
The Naked Kiss
Shock Corridor
(Criterion)
Samuel Fuller made intermittently powerful melodramas with primitive means. These films (from 1964 and 1963, respectively) are typical Fuller: Kiss follows an ex-prostitute whose arrival makes her new neighbors uneasy, while Shock chronicles the mental decline of a reporter in an asylum to investigate a murder. The movies work effectively despite Fuller’s limitations, like casting lesser actors in what should be bravura parts.
Criterion’s Blu-ray releases present top-notch transfers of both B&W dramas, and extras include several interviews and The Typewriter, the Rifle and the Movie Camera, an hour-long documentary about Fuller featuring Tim Robbins, Jim Jarmusch, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Fox)
Oliver Stone’s timely sequel to his 1987 original is a bit of an after-the-fact “told you so,” as anti-hero Gordon Gekko returns from prison to find that his Wall Street has become even worse. Michael Douglas returns as the scenery-chewing Gekko, but Carey Mulligan is wasted as his daughter and Shia LaBeouf is over his head as his future son-in-law/protégé.
No one shoots New York like Stone, and a terrific sense of the post-stock market collapse blues permeates his film, which glosses over many dramatic deficiencies. The super hi-def transfer shows off Rodrigo Prieto’s widescreen photography: among many extras, Stone’s commentary is worth a listen, and the deleted and extended scenes (with more Stone commentary) are worth a watch.
DVDs of the Week
Frontline: Death by Fire
The Spill
(PBS)
This PBS series is known for its provocative, incendiary programs, and these two are no exception. Death by Fire recounts the questionable death-penalty verdict against a 
Texas man accused of arson in the fire that killed his three children; The Spill explores the abysmal safety record of BP even before the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Both programs are decidedly one-sided, even if they give the other side a chance to speak, but so what? They make plentiful points about mistakes made by fire investigators in Texas and BP executives (also in Texas, coincidentally): as always, Frontline provides filling food for thought. No extras.
How to Get Ahead in Advertising
(Image)
Richard E. Grant’s manically comic performance as an ad man succumbing to his profession’s pressures by growing an evil twin who takes over career and marriage makes Bruce Robinson’s funny but one-note satire worth seeing. Back in 1989, Robinson was a big deal, having just made the cult hit Withnail & I; and Advertising has some good moments thanks to Grant, who even makes the big final monologue comic nirvana.
Rachel Ward (always an underrated actress because of her beauty) lends superb straight-woman support, yet both she and Grant are bogged down by Robinson’s too-literal evocation of split personality. No extras.
CD of the Week
Bastianello/Lucrezia
(Bridge)
These two chamber operas were commissioned by the valuable New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), and this recording captures their charm, and the fun the five singers and two pianists have performing these delectable scores. John Musto’s Bastianello skips around varied styles retelling a fractured Italian folktale, while William Bolcom’s Lucrezia has a ravishing zarzuela sound retelling its story of an Italian opera heroine.
Many new operas barely are heard after their premieres, so thanks to NYFOS pianists Michael Barrett and Steven Blier for recording them. Now will they be performed again live, preferably with a full knockabout production?
