Screen
reel to reel | Week of August 11, 2011
30 Minutes Or Less Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer returns with this comedy about a pizza-delivery guy (Jesse Eisenberg) who is kidnapped by dimwitted criminals (Danny McBride and Aziz Ansari) and forced to help them rob a bank. Rated R. At Flatiron, Century, ...
Harry Potter grows up
Much as I like the Paranormal Activity pictures for their unfashionable minimalism and quaintly Victorian lack of gore, it’s nice to get back to something like The Woman in Black — not authentic Victoriana, exactly (Susan Hill’s novel was published in 1983), and ...
Nolan delivers again
Inception is one of the most complicated stories I’ve ever seen on the big screen, but if you can figure out what’s going on, it’s an amazing movie filled with mind-boggling visuals and an intriguing exploration of the subconscious. It might also be the best movie ...
Drama of the real
Eveleth, Minnesota, is home to fewer than 5,000 residents and the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. Up here, hockey is a way of life...
‘Couples Retreat’ a waste of talent, unfunny
Director Peter Billingsley had a tough assignment: take four suburban couples and put them through a series of "relationship building" challenges that were thought-provoking, poignant, revealing and funny. In attempting to accomplish this, he makes everyone a crass ...
Ten short films about morality
Famed Polish writer/director Krzysztof Kieslowski already had a handful of feature films and documentaries under his belt when his writing partner, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, gave...
Noir, now more than ever
Noir: when they first started making them, they didn’t even have a name for them.
Born from a literary movement popularized by Dashiell Hammett, James...
Celebrating Stan
Watching a Stan Brakhage film is like dreaming with your eyes open. The
collision of colors and shadows, images overlapping images, distortions and
rapid-fire editing imprints...
Cinema 101
I guess you could say the low point arrived on March 27, 2022, with the broadcast of the 94th Academy Awards. No, the “slap...
How to make friends
A cross far too many stretches of our movie-going lives, we see movie after movie without seeing one that really moves. At once stealthy and breathlessly paced, The Social Network scoots at a fabulous clip, depicting how its version of Facebook founder Mark ...
