Juju Factory
Profile: Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda
Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda’s oeuvre suggests a marriage between the razor-sharp, political allegory of Ousmane Sembène and the surreal, lyrical poetry of Djibril Diop Mambety. Bakupa-Kanyinda’s native Democratic Republic of Congo is a ways from the home of these Senegalese masters, but ideas have no nation.
Sembène began his career in the late 1950’s as [...]
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Let The Right One In
Let the Right One In is the perfect synthesis between an indie art film and a gory horror movie. This Swedish chimera from director Tomas Alfredson is a love story between two lonely pre-teens, Oskar and Eli. The only problem is that Eli has been twelve for longer than she remembers, [...]
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Addendum: I was just reminded that Milk really should be on this list. It just arrived a little to late for me to make this tally. Let’s consider it my Number 11. See my review. Simply put though Gus Van Sant continues to pontificate over death, Sean Penn became relevant again, James Franco finally gave [...]
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Milk
I usually don’t write about films right after seeing them, but this review is long overdue and I was compelled to capture my immediate reaction to such a visceral piece of filmmaking. However let me make it clear, Milk is a good film, not a great film. Even though Sean Penn is in almost every [...]
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1) There Will Be Blood
2) Once
3) Persepolis
4) The Wind That Shakes the Barley
5) Zodiac
And honorable mention goes to… Hot Fuzz
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Inside the Speakeasy Theater #1
Watching Simon Pegg execute perfectly choreographed machine gun fury with a crisp beer in my right hand and an overburdened nacho in the other was the closest I’ve been to heaven. Last summer I had the great luxury of watching Hot Fuzz at the Parkway Speakeasy Theater in Oakland, California. I [...]
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Silent Light
The sensuous spiral into dawn from the celestial heights, which starts Silent Light, drops us into the flawed world of man with a cacophonous barnyard welcome. Carlos Reygadas’ new film is playing for a week as part of the Filmmaker in Focus series at the Museum of Modern Art. From the first frame to [...]
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Man on a Wire
James Marsh’s documentary Man on a Wire recounts the incredible story of Philippe Petit’s 1974 walk between the World Trade Center’s twin towers on a tightrope. Marsh employs black and white re-enactments and interviews with all the major accomplices, including Petit himself, to recount the compelling sequence of events. This transformational act, [...]
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Tony Manero
Tony Manero is a slice of normality in an immoral world. Larrain’s abrasive follow-up to his first feature, Fuga, is a psychological drama, horror movie, and black comedy all at once. As Fuga followed the obsessions of a plagiarious music student searching for redemption, Tony Manero ostensibly trails a mentally imbalanced Travolta impersonator on [...]
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Over the past seven years there has been a rash of young adult-themed dance movies. These films are usually set in some economically depressed neighborhood where dance is one of the only ways out of poverty, hence my moniker—Urban Dance movie. The blitz seems to have slowed down recently, but these soundtrack heavy films were [...]
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