davidehrlich

Reviews tagged ‘tiff2013’ by davidehrlich Patron

Sort by
Palo Alto

2013

★★★★ 7

Cigarette smoke rises from the Vatican chimney – a new Coppola has been chosen! 26-year-old Gia Coppola’s first feature sounds like a toxic brew of nepotism (she’s Francis Ford Coppola’s granddaughter) and restless vanity (the film is adapted from a collection of short stories by James Franco), but such suspicions, however warranted, are almost immediately put to bed. Essentially Fast Times at Raymond Carver High, a tight and teen-sized “Short Cuts”, “Palo Alto” begins with a blast of frustrated energy,…

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them

2014

★★½ Watched

filing this as 1 film along with HIS.

Chastain kills in a heartfelt & cleverly mirrored 2-parter about love on the ropes, but too many knots in flat script. has its moments (almost all in "her"), but absolutely drowns in unrealized potential & broad strokes. tough 190 minutes. methinks that WANTED may have actually ruined James McCavoy for me, i just can't see him as anything but a smug bastard now.

fwiw, this film was presented as a work in progress. also, was shot in every inch of my neighborhood. shot there for ages, and my dumb brain didn't put the two together until the film began.

Visitors

2013

★★½ Watched

if Qatsi trilogy was a lens, this is a looking glass. eschews 3-part structure for slow focus. more intriguing, less entrancing.

seeing it with philip glass conducting a live orchestra... *that* is how you do a fucking live-read.

What If

2013

★★★ 1

F for Friend or When Harry (Potter) Met Sally. "Goon" director riffs on classic rom-com tropes with wit & warmth. kewt. a lovely ode to toronto, among other things, but it sure does kinda cop out at the end. don't they all? nice to see a straightforward rom-com that doesn't feel like it was written by robots.

12 Years a Slave

2013

★★★★★ 6

a staggering portrait of comion & how evil is the sum of a million small apathies. historic in all respects. a masterpiece in part because of how it achieves a vital & complex inclusiveness by refusing to betray its specificity.

i'll double back on this later, and perhaps find things to nitpick, but upon first blush McQueen's film feels like nothing less than a landmark.

Tom at the Farm

2013

★★★½ 1

With “Laurence Anyways”, famously young and impressively pompadoured Québécois filmmaker Xavier Dolan proved that he was unafraid to embrace the cosmic drama inside the human heart, his epic three-hour opus believably extrapolating the intimate emotional developments of a challenged couple into the stuff of grand and gaudy opera. Every scene ends with tears and every tear is an aria unto itself, the subtitles like a libretto in blips.

Certainly his (anyone’s?) most extravagant film and arguably still his best, “Laurence…

Why Don't You Play in Hell?

2013

★★★★ 7

"Fuck Bombers never die!"

Quite possibly mankind’s greatest achievement, Sion Sono’s “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?” is less of a question than it is a glorious grindhouse requiem for an entire mode of filmmaking, and perhaps also Japanese cinema’s formal response to “Holy Motors”. A giddy self-evaluation of the medium that’s thoroughly laced with its maker’s neo-punk spirit, “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?” finds Sono returning to the deliriously flip brand of moviemaking upon which he first built…

Child's Pose

2013

★★½ 1

2013's Golden Bear, if i tried any harder to love it Herzog would have to make a doc about me. but eh, it's too loose.

slack romanian drama suggests (with earned sincerity) that simple comion can heal wounds and ameliorate class warfare. romanian edie falco's lead performance is strong but the script often leaves her hanging as the character slowly pulls her head out of her ass.