V/H/S (2012, directed by Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Gen McQuade, Joe Swanberg, and Radio Silence, 115 minutes, U.S.) SLAUGHTER TALES (2012, directed by Johnny Dickie, 90 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC There was an uncomfortable silence leaving the press screening of the new horror anthology V/H/S, one I couldn’t help breaking with a brief capsule review. “A little rape-y, no?” Slight nervous laughter ensued. V/H/S brings together a group of like-minded young filmmakers each adding a “found-footage” horror short to this collection of solidly spooky mayhem.  Ti West is probably the most acclaimed of the […]

Artwork by MARTIN ANSIN LOOPER (2012, directed by Rian Johnson, 118 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Looper, the new sci-fi film by writer/director Rian Johnson (Brick, The Brothers Bloom) starts out with a fatal unforced error. It’s the make-up applied to the eyes, nose, and jaw of its star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a ham-fisted stab at trying to make the actor resemble a younger version of Bruce Willis, who plays the same character in the film 30 years older. Right from the start this comes across as a preposterous and needlessly distracting decision. With the last Batman film and […]

Photo by TGBUSILL PHILLY POST: According to John Ciccone, the Roxy’s landlord (he also owns the neighboring Adrienne Theater), he has given current operator Bernard Neary until November 7th to vacate. “But I’ve asked him to vacate earlier and have given him conditions that would make it attractive for him to do so,” says Ciccone, adding that the Roxy could close as soon as Monday, “or even tonight.” Ciccone says that he wants the Roxy “to be more” and to show art house and repertory films like it used to but to also upgrade to digital projectors to keep up […]

  THE MASTER (2012, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, 137 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC For the first half-hour of Paul Thomas Anderson’s riveting new film The Master we watch the shell-shocked WW II vet Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) as his life sinks lower and lower into the mire of his own pathology. From soldier, to department store photographer, and finally chased off of the cabbage fields where he slaves along anonymously, Freddie keeps pace with the steamroller of a century the best that he can. When he sneaks aboard a yacht piloted by the august Lancaster Dodd […]

  SLEEPWALK WITH ME (2012, directed by Mike Birbiglia and Seth Barrish, 90 minutes, U.S.) KEEP THE LIGHTS ON (2012, directed by Ira Sachs, 101 minutes, U.S.)   BY DAN BUSKIRK  FILM CRITIC Some of the most-captivating storytelling of the last decade from any medium has come from PRI’s This American Life, the public radio show hosted by Ira Glass. Although the first-person narrative stories the show produces can span the globe, it is a whimsical take on “everyday Americans” that dominates. Sleepwalk With Me is the first film produced directly by This American Life (Ira Glass contributed to the […]

LITTLE WHITE LIES (2010, directed by Guillaume Canet, 154 minutes, France) THE WORDS (2012, directed by Brian Klugman & Lee Sternthal, 96 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Taking four years to follow-up his international hit thriller Tell No One, director Guillaume Canet has brought us Little White Lies, a very French concoction that seems eager to make some concessions to an American audience. Dubbed “a French Big Chill” for its reliance on 1960s rock and soul oldies, the comparison favors the indestructible quality of the French film industry, which even with audience-friendly product like this, shows a sophistication […]

  BY DAVID CORBO In Beasts of the Southern Wild, first time director Benh Zeitlin transmutes Lucy Alabar’s one act play, Juicy and Delicious,  into a deeply humanist film that speaks to the urgent fact that we have disrespected the resources of our Mother Earth, perhaps irreparably disrupting the balance of nature that is so necessary to our survival.  This myopic view of an impoverished isolated community threatened by global warming won Zeitlin the Caméra d’Or award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, and was designated a 2012 critics pick by the […]

  LAWLESS (2012, directed by John Hillcoat, 115 minutes, U.S./Australia) COSMOPOLIS (2012, directed by David Cronenberg, 109 minutes, U.S./Canada) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Although Lawless brings to life a violent little slice of U.S. history, detailing the Virginia moonshine wars of the last Depression, in many ways it is seeing the country through Australia’s eyes. Aussie directors have a long tradition of incorporating the landscape into their films, and Australian John Hillcoat, with the gory revisionist western The Proposition and the grim Cormac McCarthy adaptation The Road to his credit, fits easily into that mold. The film’s Australian roots […]

  BY BRANDON LAFVING ARTS CORRESPONDENT Bradley Cooper’s new film, The Words, is an artfully meta coming-of-age story that entertains just slightly more than it challenges. Its story pulls our attention through nested narratives of a writer, his book, his characters, the past, present, and every combination of the above, but the journey is rendered effortless by great storytelling. It opens on a book release press event, featuring critically acclaimed novelist Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid), who reads the first two parts of his new piece, entitled The Words. As the audience of a film rather than a book release party, […]

  TIME OUT CHICAGO: From David Cronenberg, the director of Naked Lunch and Crash, comes something truly perverse: a vision of capitalism’s decline, as seen through the blinkered eyes—and tinted car windows—of a billionaire too coolly detached to mourn even the collapse of his own empire. True to its source, a spookily prophetic 2003 best-seller from Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis is rich with topicality: Protesters hoist rodent dolls, Occupy-style, as power players cause seismic ripples in the economic landscape. Yet that description makes the film sound like a leaden lecture about How We Live, when it’s closer in spirit, and texture, […]

  PARANORMAN (2012, directed by Chris Butler & Sam Fell, 96 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Not since the 1967 animated film Mad Monster Party (made by Rankin/Bass of Christmas special fame) has there been an animated film made to appeal to the pre-teen monster fiend in me.  With the success of The Nightmare Before Christmas there has been a line of spooky animated films for kids but ParaNorman is the first to have a horror-loving kid in the center of its story.  Made in the medium of true figure animation (which in our modern world is merged […]