Director Sean Durkin uses shallow depth of field in an attempt to accentuate the psychological claustrophobia that Martha feels. Instead he manages to distract from Elizabeth Olsen’s stellar performance and detach the viewer from the emotional content or a genuine understanding of a well developed character.
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At festivals now, ‘Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone’ is an effective rock documentary of a one-of-a-kind alternative band that should have been bigger.
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Criterion’s Blu-ray restoration of the 1921 Swedish silent film looks and sounds amazing, and the movie remains a spooky classic.
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A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas kicks off the holiday season right after Halloween, which is appropriate, because this movie is kind of a freak show.
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Brett Ratner’s latest assault on cinema, ‘Tower Heist’, wears its blue-collar leanings on its sleeve like the world’s least subtle Livestrong bracelet.
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One of the best films of 2011, ‘Take Shelter’ features an impressive performance from Michael Shannon and is assured, exciting filmmaking.
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In an age where conspiracy theories are more popular than reality-TV shows, disaster king Roland Emmerich sullies the name of Shakespeare.
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Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest is a skillfully made documentary directed by Michael Rappaport about the influential hip hop group.
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It’s a good week for Blu-ray. Richard Linklater’s Criterion version ‘Dazed and Confused’ is out and ‘Attack the Block’ beams in from outer space to the inner city.
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‘The Rum Diary’ feels about as focused as an all-night bender, which I suppose is kind of the point, but is its natural, rugged charm enough?
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J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call pulls off the easily attached labels of investment bankers and attempts to humanize the first shots fired in the global financial crisis of 2008.
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Cameron Crowe’s new movie ‘Pearl Jam Twenty’ is precisely the kind of by-the-books rock doc that you might get if you were watching a two-part episode of VH1’s Behind the Music.
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‘Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom’ is a shocking, graphic film that uses extreme sadism as an allegory for the destruction of traditional values. And it’s out on Blu-ray from Criterion now.
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Cameron Diaz in ‘Bad Teacher’ and ‘Page One: Inside the New York Times’ are out on Blu-ray. One asks hard questions and the other will leave you with questions.
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Because Paranormal Activity 3 plays mainly on what we can’t see, your eyes are constantly darting around the camera frame, looking for something strange.
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