Blue Valentine writer and director Derek Cianfrance’s latest film The Place Beyond the Pines is, if anything, a study in what Robert Penn Warren, legendary 1940s author of All the King’s Men, calls “the awful responsibility of Time.” We begin with Ryan Gosling’s character Luke Glanton, a reckless circus-performing motorcyclist. Seemingly out of nowhere, Luke has great responsibility thrust upon him when an old flame from an upstate New York carnival stop steps back into his life with his infant son.
As _Avatar_ gradually accrued its second billion dollars in the last few weeks, coverage of the film itself (rather than its receipts) sank from complacent praise to idle speculation. Was the film racist? Well, accidentally. Is there going to be … Read More
“There’s power in not having to care. As Inez Guzmán remarks, the film Oppenheimer can leave New Mexico just as its subject did: apparently without a second thought. But there’s also power—more ambivalent, yes, but also more lasting—that comes with needing to pick up the pieces.”
*OUR FAMILY WEDDING*
Are we so quick to forget the lessons of West Side Story? Latinos and blacks are natural enemies. When they fall in love, their families will inevitably feud, and it will be sassy as hell. YOU KNEW THIS WHEN YOU STARTED DATING, ATTRACTIVE INTERRACIAL COUPLE. YOU MUST HAVE.
Roman Polanski has lived one of the most fascinating lives of the last century, though it would be hard to call it “good.” Such a title ought to be reserved for more pleasant, straightforward existences that perhaps begin modestly and … Read More
“These are Alma’s and the film’s first words. A cynic will scoff, but no, give a serious thought to this idea. How many of us have the courage to dream – how many of us have the courage to dispense with cynicism and see our dreams come true?”
Lena Dunham, a 23-year-old filmmaker from New York who has a degree in film studies from Oberlin, plays Aura, a 22-year-old Oberlin grad with a “useless” film studies degree, in Lena Dunham’s first feature as a director, _Tiny Furniture_, written … Read More
