Screen
reel to reel | Week of May 17, 2012
4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH In a large apartment high above the city lives a couple. They’re in love. She’s a painter, he’s a successful actor. Just a normal afternoon — except that this isn’t a normal afternoon, for them or anyone else. Because tomorrow, at 4:44 a.m., ...
He turned the engine, but the engine didn’t turn
Lanky, hulking and almost always stooped, Scott Carlin (Pete Davidson) is 24 years old, jobless, directionless, and living in the same Staten Island home...
A patient Western
At one point in Meek’s Cutoff, set in 1845, the frontier settler played by the excellent, plain-spoken Michelle Williams fires two warning shots after an alarming encounter with a Native American. Hurriedly she loads the rifle with gunpowder and ammunition, while ...
A couple of clowns
There is something in the air at the 39th Denver Film Festival (DFF), something musical. Be it Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling channeling the...
Direct action
As the human toll of global climate change comes into clearer view, attempts to find political or market solutions frustrate many environmentalists who call...
Conned by a film
The brilliantly untrustworthy documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop reminds us that a film can start out in one direction and then change course so radically, it becomes an act of provocation unto itself. It’s billed as the first feature by the shadowy British ...
An indecisive mash-up
I take notes as I watch films so that I can remember salient plot points, great effects, and idiotic story twists. During The Other Guys, I wrote down “buddy cop film from hell.” That might well sum up the weird mash-up that is The Other Guys, a movie that can’t ...
Nothing to be afraid of
When fantasy filmmaker Guillermo del Toro says he considers the 1973 made-for- TV movie Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark the scariest thing ever made for the medium, he’s not really talking about the teleplay itself...
Children of the night
The fictional oil town of Bad City, Iran is, as far as we know, populated with pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, drug users, a stray family member or two, a cat and The Girl (Sheila Vand). Casting a menacing shadow over this ghost town, The Girl rides a skateboard, ...
