Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Monday, June 29, 2015
Short Term 12
On paper, Destin Daniel Cretton’s coming-of-age drama Short Term 12 sounds like a typical Sundance exercise in trembling, low-key earnestness: A troubled social worker (Brie Larson, in a revelatory performance) works through her deeply buried issues and inability to love while counseling a series of troubled group-home kids who desperately yearn for love and connection, but are unwilling to let down their defenses. In actuality, Short Term 12 is something much greater and more lasting: an exquisitely wrought exploration of the troubled psyches of both the staff and the clients of a foster home that radiates compassion and empathy for all of its characters. It’s a deeply humane, ultimately devastating, legitimately tearjerking movie with plenty of acting-friendly moments of high drama and almost unbearably intense emotion. But it’s defined as much by its portrayal of those wonderful, life-affirming in-between times when kids with nothing to do and all day to do it toy with each other, savor rare moments of connection and humor with their peers and mentors, and generally behave like kids, albeit fucked-up kids who have seen more of the ugly side of life than anyone should in a lifetime. —Nathan Rabin
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Monday, June 8, 2015
The Master
Much was made of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master being shot on 70mm, and for good reason: Those lucky enough to live close to a theater projecting the film in that format had a much different experience than other viewers. While some puzzled why Anderson would use a format traditionally associated with epics for a film dominated by conversations captured in close-up, an optimal format viewing quickly clarified this reasoning: There are strong lights behind the characters, and in 70mm, viewers are positively irradiated by dazzling levels of whiteness.
Moving away from the entrancingly over-the-top, aggressively in-your-face Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood, The Master outlines the relationship between the loosely L. Ron Hubbard-ish figure Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and sexually troubled World War II vet Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix). After sneaking onto Dodd’s yacht during a party, Quell becomes Dodd’s aide-de-camp: ad hoc bartender, attack dog against skeptics, and partner in partying. Both lead actors are at their rhythmically idiosyncratic best, justifying Anderson’s confidence in paring back his visual fireworks.
The film’s investigation of male bonding through bad behavior is one thread in a rare film that wonders, without snickering, how trauma and asocialization are shaped and expressed through sexual dysfunction. If it’s not as memorable a spectacle viewed at home, that just means Anderson made his point about the glories of shooting on and projecting celluloid. Even stripped of that factor, The Master is typically dense, unexpectedly funny, and predictably unpredictable, an actor-fueled installment in Anderson’s ongoing portraits of 20th-century American history. —Vadim Rizov
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Friday, June 5, 2015
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Monday, June 1, 2015
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Season 1 Finale
writers: Robert Carlock, Sam Means
director: Tristram Shapeero
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