Posted on December 27, 2009 by Wayne Lorenzo Titus
1. Inglorious Basterds
I am far from a Tarantino fanatic so this placement is quite surprising to me if no one else. Nonetheless, when I closely examined the competition, I had seen no other film more than once willingly, nor did I enjoy a lead performance more this year than Christoph Waltz as the deranged Nazi [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Inglorious Basterds, Hurt Locker, Humpday, Big Fan, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Avatar, An Education, Moon, Goodbye Solo, Up in the Air, Gomorra, Up, Zombieland, The Road, Children of Invention, Watchmen, Star Trek, Rudo y Cursi, The Maid, Summer Hours, Black Dynamite, Antichrist, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Messenger, Coco Before Chanel, Broken Embraces, The Headless Woman, The Informant, 500 Days of Summer, Where the Wild Things Are, Me and Orson Welles, Julia, Treeless Mountain, The White Ribbon, Brothers, In the Loop, A Serious Man, Two Lovers, Sugar, Crazy Heart, Nine, Collapse, A Single Man, The Exploding Girl, Tyson, District 9, Funny People, Of Time and the City, The Baader Meinhof Complex, Medicine for Melancholy, Anvil: The Story of Anvil | Leave a Comment »
Posted on May 25, 2009 by Wayne Lorenzo Titus
IS ANTAGONISM OUR NATURAL STATE?
In Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), the postmodern aesthetic interred in the narrative, set design, dialogue, special effects, and literary sources have been explored by various theorists. This postmodernist stance is invariably in dialogue with Fredric Jameson’s influential essay, “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” In this treatise, he historicizes postmodernism [...]
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Posted on May 20, 2009 by Wayne Lorenzo Titus
Posted on February 5, 2009 by Wayne Lorenzo Titus
Chungking Express
In Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express the frenzied ruminations surrounding lost love, loneliness, and irrepressible change are rendered impressionistically on the screen. The film is broken into two discrete stories. I will be focusing my discussion on a scene between Officer #633 (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and Fay (Faye Wong) that takes place towards [...]
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Posted on January 26, 2009 by Wayne Lorenzo Titus
Deux Vies…Plus Une
Review also posted at Nextbook
Deux Vies…Plus Une is a whimsical look at boredom and uncertainty around forty. The film’s New York Premiere is part of the Jewish Film Festival at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Idit Cebula’s feature debut is engrossed with the newly turbulent life of Eliane Weiss, played by Emmanuelle [...]
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Posted on January 12, 2009 by Wayne Lorenzo Titus
Revolutionary Road
Based on the acclaimed 1962 novel by Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road is a clear-eyed indictment of the American dream as it stood in 1950’s America—the respectable house with the well-manicured lawn, the upwardly mobile job in the city, the 2.5 children, and the desire to be just like everyone else but slightly better. Well [...]
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Posted on December 27, 2008 by Wayne Lorenzo Titus
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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Posted on December 26, 2008 by Wayne Lorenzo Titus
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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Posted on December 20, 2008 by Wayne Lorenzo Titus
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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Posted on December 16, 2008 by Wayne Lorenzo Titus
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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