Francois Ozon’s IN THE HOUSE is a delicious examination of the pleasures and dangers of addictive narrative.  Storytelling (and corresponding tricks of cinematic structure) has been an interest of Ozon’s throughout his career, in films like Sitcom, Swimming Pool, 5×2 and Angel, and here he approaches the subject from a new angle. The setting is […]

  WORLD WAR Z:  Watch It At Home – Third Act Heroics, In More Ways Than One The travails of WORLD WAR Z on the way to the screen have been widely discussed, and in the end the misshapen, Frankenstein-like $200M (plus marketing costs) assembly of various genres, writers, editors and re-shoots are something of […]

  THE LAST OF ROBIN HOOD is an odd miss, a sliver of movie history that seems to have all the right elements but never quite jells.  The title refers to Errol Flynn, legendary swashbuckling star of The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, The Dawn Patrol and many other classic Hollywood adventures, and it’s hard to […]

  No one can accuse LOW DOWN of attempting to glamorize the true story it tells.  Jeff Preiss’s first film as a director is a slow, grim dirge set in an underbelly of the jazz world in 1970s Los Angeles, and it’s been co-written (with Topper Lilien) and -produced (and based on the memoir by) Amy-Jo Albany, […]

  JERSEY BOYS:  Watch It At Home – Clint Eastwood Directing the Broadway Hit Is As Weird As It Sounds No one will mistake the combination of Clint Eastwood and JERSEY BOYS for the fortuitous collision of chocolate and peanut-butter.  Some of Eastwood’s strongest tendencies as a filmmaker–admirable in the right context–fit badly here, and the result is […]

  THE PROGRAM feels entirely useless.  With an authoritative documentary about the Lance Armstrong story already in wide distribution (Alex Gibney’s excellent The Armstrong Lie), the only reason to attempt a scripted version of the story would be to offer insights not present in the documentary material, or a cohesive narrative of his life that […]

  BREATHE (Bleecker Street – Oct 13):  BREATHE wasn’t the favored Triumph of the Human Spirit drama at Toronto this year; that title went to Stronger, with Jake Gyllanhaal as a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing.  Not having seen Stronger, I can’t compare the two, but Breathe has plenty in it to please audiences […]

  BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON (Amazon):  Paul Downs Colaizzo, previously a playwright, makes a remarkably assured film writing/directing debut with Brittany Runs a Marathon, which features a breakout star performance by Jillian Bell.  The story is based on Colaizzo’s own friend, and revolves around an overweight woman who decides to remake her life physically and […]