CEDAR RAPIDS (2011, directed by Miguel Arteta, 86 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC If you can’t wait for The Hangover 2, Ed Helms has returned to the screen with a solo hangover, playing a child-like insurance agent partying for the first time in Cedar Rapids. Consistently amusing, if too familiar to feel truly inspired, Cedar Rapids pushes the outrageousness, yet never catches you by surprise.   Cedar Rapids is directed by the Miquel Arteta, who wrote his acclaimed debut, Star Maps, in 1997. Since then, Arteta has since made character-driven comedies with others scripts, most memorably Mike White, […]

KURT LODER: There’s London, there’s Paris, and there’s Cedar Rapids, Iowa—for straight-arrow Tim Lippe, not necessarily in that order. Tim (Ed Helms, of The Hangover) is a small-town insurance agent who looks upon his calling as heroic—he’s there when his clients need him most, and he really cares. He’s never been anywhere outside of peaceful Brown Valley, Wisconsin, where he still lives, in the same house he grew up in. True, he’s occasionally sleeping with his seventh-grade teacher (Sigourney Weaver), to whom he likes to think of himself as “pre-engaged,” but he’s otherwise a museum-quality naïf—never flown on a plane, […]

THE BLACK CAT (YABU NO NAKA NO KURANEKO) (1968, directed by Kaneto Shindô, 99 minutes, Japan) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Yesterday, the Inquirer reported yet another story of a soldier who had committed suicide after returning from the war. The idea of a soldier being haunted by the things he has seen in battle is an ancient one, and the story gets a mesmerizing telling in director Kaneto Shindô’s 1968 film The Black Cat. The classic ghost story has a free screening tonight at The Bellevue, as part of a weekly six-film series presented by Japanese culture impresario Eric […]

Tonight at International House, the Secret Cinema will be presenting an extremely rare dye-transfer Technicolor print of the1967 omnibus feature The Oldest Profession. Popularized during the foreign film boom of the 60s, an omnibus feature is a collection of shorts made by different directors exploring a single theme. The Oldest Profession is a blithe and often comedic examination of prostitution throughout the ages told in six parts. Despite the fact that it includes a segment from legendary French New Wave auteur Jean-Luc Godard — which was made during what was arguably his richest period — and one from Philippe de […]

BLUE VALENTINE (2010, Dir. by Derek Cianfrance, 112 minutes, U.S.) If you’re expecting a warm-fuzzy remake of The Notebook, where romance-never-dies and love conquers all, think again. With Ryan Gosling assuming as the lead, along with Heath Ledger ex- Michelle Williams, it’s no wonder that such preconceptions arise, but, as the title suggests, this isn’t going to be all sunshine and lollipops. On the other hand, if you’ve come looking for a brutally realistic examination of love-on-the-rocks married life, accompanied by a reversal of typical gender stereotypes, then this is a film for you. From the get-go, the camera delves […]

CINEDELPHIA: Cinedelphia.com is a new online resource for repertory film screenings in the Philadelphia area. These types of screenings are often ignored by major showtime websites as well as the online counterparts of our city’s major publications. Adventurous movie-goers no longer need to visit multiple venue sites for listings as Cinedelphia provides a comprehensive overview with links directly to said sites’ event details. MORE

DAVID EDELSTEIN: The Green Hornet at least is likable, a refreshing change from all those heavy, angst-ridden superhero movies. The director is Michel Gondry of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a virtuoso at making childish fantasies take wing. And I’m not the first to notice a Bob Hope-Bing Crosby road-movie vibe between the two stars, Seth Rogen (as Britt Reid, aka The Green Hornet) and Jay Chou (the kung fu master Kato), who are both smitten with Cameron Diaz in the Dorothy Lamour role. Rogen’s Britt is a ne’er-do-well rich kid, the son of a disapproving media mogul played […]

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Gone are the days when filmmakers kept a respectful distance from their characters. In Blue Valentine, writer and director Derek Cianfrance is obsessive in how he uses the hand-held camera to get in his actors’ faces. Yet there’s something in those faces to see — something momentous, angry, desperate, unmanageable. The film is a rough ride with the shock absorbers removed. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams play a married couple, Dean and Cindy, with a little daughter named Frankie. Dean paints houses and Cindy is a nurse. The movie’s opening is as ominous as any horror film. The […]

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC 2010! What a confounding year politically-speaking, and a similarly confused, bleak and exciting year for film as well. I can never quite get into movie critic character, striding down from the mountaintop and proclaim “The Twelve Greatest Films of the Year!” But here’s a dozen films I’d like to remember from 2010, realizing that the market ubiquity of successes like David Fincher’s The Social Network and Aronofsky’s Black Swan (both of which I really liked) will make those films unavoidable for the next decade. What could be more universal than a depiction of life after […]