Opens Friday at The Ritz @ The Bourse. Bradley Manning is on trial right now. RELATED: The advance of information technology epitomized by Google heralds the death of privacy for most people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism. This is the principal thesis in my book, “Cypherpunks.” But while Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Cohen tell us that the death of privacy will aid governments in “repressive autocracies” in “targeting their citizens,” they also say governments in “open” democracies will see it as “a gift” enabling them to “better respond to citizen and customer concerns.” In reality, the erosion of individual […]

  THE DAILY BEAST: One of the most hotly anticipated films at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, running from May 15-26 in the south of France, is Only God Forgives. The crime-thriller reteams Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn with his star, Ryan Gosling, and is Gosling’s last film before his self-imposed hiatus from acting. Gosling plays Julian, an American running a Muy Thai boxing club in Bankok, Thailand, that’s a front for a drug-smuggling operation. When his brother, Billy (Tom Burke), is killed in an act of revenge after murdering an underage prostitute, the two boys’ mother, Crystal (Kristin Scott […]

  THE GUARDIAN: Inside Llewyn Davis is set in 1961 in New York, amid the folk-revival scene from which Bob Dylan would emerge. But this is not a story about the singer-songwriter, whom Ethan Coen called “the elephant in the room” of the film. The story, inspired by the memoir of folk singer Dave Van Ronk, instead takes as its main character a struggling artist teetering between success and failure, who would later be eclipsed by what its star, Oscar Isaac, described as “the poet, the abstract thinker” that Dylan became. It is about, said Joel Coen, “the lesser-known scene […]

FRANCES HA (2012, directed by Noah Baumbach, 85 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC  The comic character studies of writer/director Noah Baumbach are steeped in cynicism and despair, hashing out the dark realities of family, love, and life in general, so it is a surprise that his latest film radiates love from nearly every frame. That love is for the star and co-writer Greta Gerwig and Baumbach’s latest, Frances Ha is a sad sack comic valentine to the off-balance appeal of the daffy Ms. Gerwig. It’s tempting to oversell this poignant little slice of almost nothing but its delicate […]

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS (2013, directed by J.J. Abrams, 132 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The sequel to the J.J. Abrams 2009 Star Trek movie is not lacking in entertainment value. It’s as spectacular on screen as only a couple hundred million dollars can be but sad to say, it isn’t much of a movie. Never being more than a casual fan of the ubiquitous 2009 Paramount reboot, it is not quite sacrilege I feel regarding Abrams re-imagining of Roddenberry’s original series. Instead, it is disappointment at the Abrams’ Trek being so undistinguished on its own, its power […]

  THE GREAT GATSBY (2013, directed by Baz Luhrmann, 143 minutes, Australia/U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It is with no pleasure that I stand over the corpse of the long-promised Great Gatsby, extravagantly pieced together from parts of once-living things by the mad scientist/filmmaker Baz Luhrmann. I can’t say I ever had much faith that this enterprise was meant for greatness, but there at least seemed to be some excitement  possible if the director could just get the beast off the operating table. But no, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is a stillborn Frankenstein; stare as you may, there […]

  IRON MAN THREE (2013, directed by Shane Black, 130 minutes U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC A decade of endless super hero blockbusters, the majority from the Marvel Comics roster, should be enough to exhaust any Hollywood trend, but fresh or not the genre shows no signs of abating. The one thing that set Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark apart from the pack in previous installments of the Iron Man franchise was that, unlike his crime-fighting colleagues, he wasn’t crippled by angst but instead loved being a world-beating Man of Iron. However, with Iron Man Three the good times […]

The year is high in the mid-’60s. The place: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a country chafing under a brutal dictatorship. The setting: a swingin’ ’60s nightclub au-go-go straight out of Austin Powers. Lights flash and the music throbs as the camera zooms in and out to the beat. The club is filled with the hip, the young and the privileged, all dressed in mod Carnaby Street finery. Os Mutantes, Brazil’s rough-translation answer to the psychedelic-period Beatles, are set to take the stage. Suddenly, the music cuts out and the lights come up as the room fills with government storm troopers. […]

  OBLIVION (2013, directed by Joseph Kosinski, 124 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The hype seemed a little underwhelming in trumpeting the release of the epic sci-fi flick Oblivion. Arriving pre-blockbuster season and directed by the newcomer behind the underwhelming Tron: The Legacy, I’d be kidding if I said optimism was in bloom. Yet with spring, all possibilities are possible: Oblivion is a minor triumph of lowered expectations, sporting a fairly fresh premise and gorgeous production design, while serving as a somewhat sturdy vehicle for its middle-aged star to fire laser guns and fly space cruisers like a […]

  EVIL DEAD (2013, directed by Fede Alvarez, 91 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It is not unusual for aging pop artists to remake their early hits to take advantage of new recording technology, a new publishing deal, or some lingering impulse of perfectionism. Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Rob Tappert, the director, star, and producer of the 1981 cult-horror hit The Evil Dead have come together again to produce this modern reboot of the demonic franchise, and it is far superior to the original in nuanced acting, realistic effects and production design. Yet unsurprisngly, this new Evil […]