REVIEW: The Hundred-Foot Journey [2014]

“You cook to make ghosts” With Chocolat and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen under his belt, The Hundred-Foot Journey isn’t anything approaching new territory for director Lasse Hallström. But if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right? Honestly, if he can continue making feel good tales like this—bona fide crowd-pleasers—we should all be happy since it keeps him busy and away from the allure of helming a hat trick of Nicholas Sparks adaptations. There may be no surprises in this cinematic version of a novel Oprah Winfrey selected as part…

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VIDEO: Jenny Lewis’ “Just One of the Guys”

Indie-folk/Alt-country, genre hyphenate singer/songwriter Jenny Lewis is back with her third (second if you don’t count her collaboration with The Watson Twins) solo album entitled The Voyager. It follows a successful duo disc with beau Johnathan Rice and last year’s Rilo Kiley effort Rkives. And it’s great. The first video has been released for track “Just One of the Guys”—a song dealing her biological clock and perhaps indifference to joining the maternal club. Directed by Lewis herself, it features Anne Hathaway, Brie Larson, a hilarious Kristen Stewart, and a fourth…

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REVIEW: Half of a Yellow Sun [2014]

“Go and tell your fellow witches you did not see my son” For writer/director Biyi Bandele, adapting Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s acclaimed novel Half of a Yellow Sun was more than simply a job. He read her very personal account—the revolutionary at its center is based heavily on her father while each additional character and event is a slightly varied take on an authentic tale she heard during research—and saw a love story amidst the volatile war that raged outside his parents’ door when he was brought into this world. Focusing…

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FANTASIA14 REVIEW: Preservation [2014]

“The bear went over the mountain” When Christopher Denham‘s Preservation shows recently discharged vet Sean Neary (Pablo Schreiber) telling sister-in-law Wit (Wrenn Schmidt) about how playing war as a kid allowed him to be killed and still find his way home when the game ended, I couldn’t help think of underrated Canadian film I Declare War. In it a group of children battling in the woods is shown killing each other via imaginations projected onscreen. We watch as guns and bows replace the sticks of reality inside the players’ minds—a…

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FANTASIA14 REVIEW: Ejecta [2014]

“Something came to me” Many might take my comparing Ejecta to The Fourth Kind as a slight, but I actually enjoy that film a lot. While Chad Archibald and Matt Wiele‘s science fiction horror doesn’t pretend it’s real, the crosscutting between time and styles similarly keeps us off-balance enough to buy into the escalating danger onscreen. We’re shown straight away that a government or privatized military agency has captured William Cassidy/Spider Nevi (Julian Richings) in the woods through night vision goggles and yet this convergence is the mid-point of the…

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REVIEW: Whisper [2014]

“I wanna be an astronaut” I receive a lot of unsolicited films from artists looking for reviews to help gauge audience acceptance, but Damien Kazan‘s short Whisper has to be the first from a director calling himself an “aspiring filmmaker”. It’s a small thing, but one steeped in modesty and excitement that I can’t stop myself from mentioning. Anyone who creates a film—no matter the scope of its distribution—is a filmmaker to me. Art in general is about the making and oftentimes we’re our own worst enemies as far as…

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REVIEW: Guardians of the Galaxy [2014]

“I don’t learn” It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the best Marvel film to date would be one without a single recognizable character to anyone not already a fan. Guardians of the Galaxy has been around since 1969, but it’s the 2008 iteration by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning which struck the studio’s fancy as far as opening their cinematic universe wide open. There’s still a tenuous connection to Earth with the group’s default leader being a human snatched as a child by a Ravager ship, yet this detail…

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REVIEW: Boyhood [2014]

“Life don’t give you bumpers” It’s almost impossible not to consider Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood one of the year’s best films on the surface. I don’t think any version of reality has the Academy neglecting to vote it onto the Oscar ballot because it’s a cinematic feat unlike few others. To fathom the number of moving parts a twelve-year shoot entails with two non-actor leads—one the director’s daughter no less—is mind blowing. To witness the result’s success critically and commercially is seeing a cherry on top for an artwork that matured…

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FANTASIA14 REVIEW: Time Lapse [2014]

“I believe I’ve seen my death” While ultimately a flawed film, Time Lapse does do what every memorable sci-fi brainteaser should: it makes you blind to the obvious. Well, I should rephrase that and say it made me blind because I don’t have a magical camera to capture the future and your reaction post-viewing. I bought into the premise and mystery, allowing curiosity to help me ignore the somewhat over-wrought CW primetime lineup-like performances that bring director Bradley King and co-writer B.P. Cooper‘s thriller to life. To me standing strong…

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FANTASIA14 REVIEW: The Infinite Man [2014]

“Sexual congress in five” There are some great science fiction films that deal with time travel in a way blockbusters like The Terminator simply cannot due to scale and want for mass appeal. To fans of that series a movie like Primer may be too technically oppressive and intellectual while Timecrimes too dark and finite. Well, Australian Hugh Sullivan looks to change these preconceptions by combining Shane Carruth‘s impeccable plotting and Nacho Vigalondo‘s expert visual repetition in a genre the casual moviegoer can embrace: romantic comedy. In fact the clichéd…

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FANTASIA14 REVIEW: The Harvest [2014]

“God doesn’t think he’s a doctor” I can see why director John McNaughton chose Stephen Lancellotti‘s script The Harvest to be his first feature length film in thirteen years, but I’m not sure it was worth the effort. There are some cool aspects to the horror thriller that may have worked better if its 104-minute runtime didn’t tick along at a snail’s pace—a shortcoming I guess he has no one to blame but himself. A lot of questions are posed, crazy becomes crazy about halfway through with a genuinely startling…

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