2011, directed by Lynne Ramsay, 112 minutes, U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The opening image in director Lynne Ramsay’s suburban nightmare, We Need To Talk About Kevin, is of household curtains blowing in the dark, accompanied to the sound of a sprinkler’s rhythmic spraying, with the image ultimately burning out into white light. The natural elements, water, air, and light should all be comforting but something foreboding is behind that curtain, something that we won’t see until the final act of this grim domestic horror story. Similarly, the bond between mother and child is sacred part of life, yet […]

TIME OUT CHICAGO: Like a heavy-metal Grey Gardens, the film depicts the scraggly-headed and scabby-armed singer as a ghost forever haunted by drug abuse and an arena glory that never was. But in a happy twist, the underground metal legend has exorcised enough demons to revive his band and spellbind a new generation with darkly poetic confessions, bug-eyed stage antics and seminal, doom-ridden grind. MORE INQUIRER: Don Argott and Demian Fenton’s Last Days Here is a rock documentary by the Philadelphia filmmakers who created the Barnes Foundation argument-starter, The Art of the Steal. Their new film focuses on Bobby Liebling, […]

CITY PAPER: Just about every bodily liquid and its corresponding sound effect is given screen time. So are a lot of the tics familiar to fans of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!: cringeable minor roles filled by odd-looking old people, repetitious dialogue, glitchy editing tricks, sudden earnestness, sudden shirtlessness, computer graphics from bygone times, infomercial-ish asides, uncomfortable yelling and mugging and hugging and breathing all over each other. If you don’t like that stuff, your disgust will delight those who do. This movie needs to exist, serving the same sociological purpose as 2 Girls 1 Cup, a post-mod […]

MOTHER JONES: What to make of the far-left agenda of Illumination Entertainment‘s adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax? For starters, the new animated film promotes a worldview that elevates the Earth above man and private industry. Economic growth is maligned as a force for evil, while those so-called Truffula trees are put on a fluffly, polychromatic pedestal. Successful businessmen are demonized as Orwellian overlords and planet destroyers. And the movie even has the gall to glorify—gasp!—single moms. These are some of the ways in which the inevitable conservative freak-out will manifest. Lou Dobbs on Fox Business has already started being a […]

RELATED: Moonrise Kingdom Trailer PREVIOUSLY: The Magnificent Anderson DAN BUSKIRK: In past films Anderson’s childish, self-involved characters could be frustrating as they moped around his immaculately dressed rooms yet this sort of navel-gazing magically transforms itself when transposed to sweet little woodland creatures.  And thankfully Roald Dahl’s original novel (adapted by Anderson with The Squid and the Whale‘s Noah Baumbach) gives them enough to do as they tunnel, fight and argue through their battles against the evil farmers Boggis, Bunce, and Bean.  Some of the film’s funniest moments are when the kvetching ends and the characters briefly behave like the […]

Vive la France! And mega-kudos to Christopher Plummer, it only took 82 years to become an overnight star and prove that good things come to those who great.

RAMPART (2011, directed by Oren Moverman, 108 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK I thought it was an interesting move when film producer Edward Pressman issued a second, unconnected chapter to the 1992 film Bad Lieutenant, going from Abel Ferrara directing Keitel as a corrupt cop in gentrifying New York to Warner Herzog helming a tale of pain-wracked Nick Cage in post-Katrina Louisiana. Although unaffiliated to the Bad Lieutenant films, Rampart exists for the same reason: to provide a tough star vehicle, in this case for Woody Harrelson as a loose cannon cop in post-riot Los Angeles. Surrounded by an exceptionally […]

CORIOLANUS (2011, directed By Ralph Fiennes, 122 minutes, U.K.) THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY (2010, directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 94 minutes, Japan)  BY DAN BUSKIRK British thespian Ralph Fiennes has joined together with Gladiator screenwriter John Logan for an energetic adaptation of Coriolanus, one of Shakespeare’s decidedly second-tier tragedies. This is the first English language big screen version of the tale of the titular warrior/statesman who falls from favor with his people, and while Fiennes plunders the play for modern relevance he never solves the problem inherent in Shakespeare’s original work: Coriolanus is just too despicable to rouse the sympathies […]

Urban Farming is the topic of the timely documentary film, Urban Roots, which explores the urban farming phenomenon in Detroit, Michigan. Food grown locally in community gardens and urban farms is starting to make a positive impact for families faced with food challenge issues in Philadelphia. Drexel University will host the Philadelphia theatrical premiere of Urban Roots tomorrow night (Tuesday, February 7th) at 7:30 PM in the Bossone Research Center (3140 Market St.). After the screening, members of Philadelphia’s urban farming community and the film’s director, Mark MacInnis, will focus on Philadelphia urban farming and how to get involved. Prior […]

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Most critics get their year-end piece done before Santa’s arrival, I’m always holding out hope that I could still see a year-end contender in the final days before the New Year. I finally caught up with Michel Hazanavicius’ silent film homage The Artist on New Year’s Eve and left feeling it has been preposterously over-praised. Conceptually, I am sold on celebrating silent and black & white cinema history, but its feel for the era is so lazily inauthentic and its plot so derivative and thin that it failed to levitate my spirit, although I’ll attest […]

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2011, directed by David Fincher, 158 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The U.S. version of Stieg Larsson’s international best-selling thriller The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has arrived, a little more stylish and pumped up, yet containing much of the same problematic structure that dogged its previous adaptation and the source novel itself. Like the Harry Potter series, this film adaptation has ballooned to a jumbo length of more than two and a half hours to capture the many details of the novel, whether it makes for energetic storytelling or not. In […]