Most Virgos have a thing for containers. Lots of containers. Especially those that nest in each other. John Hawkes, a Virgo, spent most of his time shooting “The Sessions” in such receptacle. An iron lung. “I’m trapped in a big metal box,” says Hawkes’s character in the movie. And his physically confined performance – to […]
Film: ‘The Sessions’: John Hawkes Contains Himself in Virgo Role and Scores Spirits Award Nom
November 27, 2012 by
Film: ‘Killing Them Softly’ (2012)
November 25, 2012 by
Any thriving business arguably owes a good part of its success to Saturnine measures: firm management and a strict protocol of following rules and weeding out trouble makers. Why should neighborhood mob activities be any different? In “Killing Them Softly,” Andrew Dominik’s riveting and brutally ugly movie about an ill-fated mob-sponsored card game, the rigors […]
Film: ‘Rust and Bone’ (2012)
November 25, 2012 by
The saying goes that we choose relationship partners who balance our weaknesses. In “Rust and Bone,” director Jacques Audiard creates a classic pairing of two people whose physical and psychological gaps need deep healing. Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard), a trainer of orcas who works in a marine theme park in southern France meets Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), […]
Film: ‘Life of Pi’ (2012)
November 25, 2012 by
Seductive, elusive and vividly imaginative Neptune, with its proclivity towards unconscious exploration, blankets Ang Lee’s 3-D “Life of Pi” like a shimmering veil. The movie is as much a tribute to the watery planet as it is a revelation of Lee’s own fascination with fictive truth. “Life of Pi,” which debuted at the New York […]
Film: ‘Hitchcock’ (2012)
November 21, 2012 by
In “Hitchcock,” which recounts the legendary director’s fascination with the subject matter that would become his movie “Psycho,” the adage “Behind every great man there’s a great woman” comes at you like that knife in the iconic shower scene. Alfred Hitchcock, portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in Sacha Gervasi’s film, turned “great” into a multi-hyphenate vocation. […]
Film: ‘Hitchcock’: The Big ‘Psycho’ Reveal
November 21, 2012 by
The most grin-inducing segment in“Hitchcock” is the one that features Hitch’s (Anthony Hopkins) brilliant public-relations scheme for the theatrical premiere of his latest movie “Psycho.” “Hitchcock” has already clarified for us that, because the director couldn’t get Paramount to fund the project, he ponied up his own money. That studio agreed to distribute “Psycho,” and […]
Film: ‘Skyfall’ (2012)
November 13, 2012 by
There’s enough life-and-death chases, derring-do, femmes, and an over-the-top villain in “Skyfall,” the latest addition to the James Bond cinematic catalog, to make it feel familiar. But this entertainment is just as much Moon-and-Mum as it is Mars-and-Guns. As Silva (Javier Bardem), the villain, puts it: “Mommy was very bad.” Mom, of course, is M […]
Film: ‘Arbitrage’ (2012)
September 10, 2012 by
Mogul Robert Miller (Richard Gere) is in the process of selling his family-owned company. But beneath the entrepreneurial gloss, the event is more akin to a fire sale. That’s because Miller needs to unload his prize before anyone with accounting smarts detects a more than a $400 million fraud. Pluto rules the big reveal of […]
Film: ‘The Good Doctor’ (2012)
September 7, 2012 by
For many people, bedside manner plays a big role in assessing how “good” a physician is. In “The Good Doctor,” Martin Blake (Orlando Bloom), a British doctor doing a residency in the U.S., has an inspired connection with his patient Diane (Riley Keough) that’s off-the-charts impressive: caring, calming and sweetly personal. But we’ve previously seen […]
Film: ‘Lawless’ (2012)
August 29, 2012 by
At its core, the Prohibition moonshine-and-brass-knuckles saga “Lawless” is a movie about three entrepreneurs. Not quite an instructional how-to business flick, but the Saturnian themes of persistence, survival and ends justifying the means are as rampant and hardcore here as the violence. The movie – based on a real-life family and set primarily in Franklin, […]
Latest Tweets