Jar Jar Binks Goes to War
Lucas crashes ‘Red Tails’
By Armond White
George Lucas’ sales tactics for Red Tails, his $93 million production about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American pilots in the armed forces, make a bigger bang than the film itself. Read more
New Series Features New York’s Most Macabre
By Anam Baig
Ronni Thomas, a filmmaker and oddity enthusiast, has created a new web series documenting the darkness, eccentricity and mystery of the uncharted and unimaginable happenings of New York City. Read more
Flickers of Dance
Lincoln Center’s annual Dance on Camera Festival is a must-see
By Susan Reiter
Now in its 40th year, Dance on Camera is at a new level of maturity. The annual event at the Walter Reade Theater that once fit into a three-day weekend has expanded to fill five days, Jan. 27–31, and within its brief duration has its own opening night, centerpiece and closing night films. Read more
The Final Chapter
After almost 20 years, West Memphis Three chroniclers close the book
By Marissa Maier
When done well, documentary film has the rare ability to transcend the confines of the silver screen to effect real change in the lives of its subjects. Like Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Paradise Lost trilogy about the West Memphis Three helped free three wrongly convicted men. With their third installment in the series, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, which premieres on HBO Jan. 12, the duo has closed the book on a story they have chronicled for almost 20 years—one that has left an indelible mark on them as filmmakers. Read more
Thug Cinema
Guy Ritchie’s dastardly Sherlock Holmes reboot
By Armond White
Guy Ritchie’s calculations in his sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows are so low-down they’re almost diabolical. He has retooled the famous fictional detective character with no respect for either Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary creation or the ticket-buying audience. Against tradition (previous incarnations of Holmes emphasized mystery and deduction), Ritche panders to the current, degraded taste for blatancy and violence. Read more
The 21st Annual New York Jewish Film Festival
January marks the beginning of a new film festival season—and what better way to kick it off than with the 21st annual New York Jewish Film Festival, Jan. 11–26? Presented in partnership with The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the festival promises to provide a diverse global perspective on the Jewish experience with 35 features and shorts from 11 countries, many of which will be followed by post-screening Q&As with filmmakers and special guests in attendance. Read more
Armond White’s Film Capsules
By Armond White
50/50—The buddy comedy genre faces cancer. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is helped through crisis by Seth Rogen. Decent emotions get cheated of depth by blithe, nonspiritual approach. Dir. Jonathan Levine.
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Story reigns supreme in The Hedgehog
By Ed Koch
The Hedgehog (+)
I truly enjoyed this film from beginning to end. It has a slow rhythm, and although nothing very exciting happens until the very end, it is totally absorbing.
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Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
Serge Gainsbourg is rescued from the hipsters by a new biopic
By Armond White
Graphic artist Joann Sfar makes a bold directorial debut with Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life by bringing his own artistic personality to bear upon this tribute to Serge Gainsbourg, the French recording artist/roué who has become a hipster icon. For Sfar, Gainsbourg (born Lucien Ginsberg) is foremost an icon of French Jewish identity. One of the first of the film’s many animated sequences is “THE JEW AND FRANCE” poster announcing Sfar’s underlying theme, as in his graphic novel The Rabbi’s Cat. This immediately distinguishes Gainsbourg as a work of powerful, personal imagination.
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Ruining Paul Rudd
Our Idiot Brother is The Small Lebowski
By Armond White
Count Our Idiot Brother among Paul Rudd’s poor choices—a select group of dumb to unbearable films including The Shape of Things, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Dinner for Schmucks that waste the actor’s estimable gifts. Rudd’s commitment to playing off-center characters who combine nerdiness with idiosyncratic charm has made him a new kind of romantic comedian. He takes the Cary Grant mantel into the post-feminist era, where masculinity shades easily into non-aggressive, quasi-gay traits—the hallmarks of Rudd’s best characterizations in I Love You Man, Role Models, Diggers and Clueless.
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