The Playlist

Review: 'Beautiful Boy' Presents Tragedy As An Acting Exercise

By Gabe Toro
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June 2, 2011 8:12 AM
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1 Comment

If you were, or still are, a post-millennial creative-type, there’s a chance you channeled the emotions and experiences of events like the Columbine massacre or 9/11 into some form of art. Very few of these ended up being films, books, or songs where audiences found meaning. Several of these people were wise enough to file that screenplay back in the cabinet, never to speak of our attempts at fake grief ever again.

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Review: 'Submarine’ Is A Smart & Sharp Coming-Of-Age Comedy & A Promising Debut

By Cory Everett
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June 2, 2011 7:34 AM
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1 Comment

One of the best films at this year's Sundance Film Festival was one that actually had its debut at last year’s TIFF. Richard Ayoade’s “Submarine” is a remarkably assured debut filled with dry humor, inventive visual wit and great performances. Adapted by Ayoade from a 2008 coming-of-age novel by Joe Dunthorne, the film follows 15 year old Oliver Tate (a perfectly cast Craig Roberts), a somewhat delusional teenager who believes himself to be a literary genius, (he reads Nietzsche and searches the dictionary for new words), but in actuality is a social outcast who gets bullied at school and doesn’t know how to talk to girls. Oliver develops a crush on classmate Jordana (a wickedly good Yasmin Paige), an emotionally guarded pyromaniac, who initially agrees to go out with him only to make her ex-boyfriend jealous.

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Review: Jean-Luc Godard's 'Film Socialisme' Is A Pointless Exercise In...We Don't Even Know What

By Kevin Jagernauth
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June 2, 2011 1:36 AM
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3 Comments

The following is a reprint of our review from the Cannes Film Festival in 2010.

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Review: 'Super 8' Is A Summer Blockbuster Just Like You Always Remembered

By Leah Zak
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June 1, 2011 7:01 AM
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8 Comments

The first teaser for “Super 8” debuted in front of “Iron Man 2” way back in early May of 2010, featuring a single sequence of a violent train collision and a mystery car containing something ominous, large, strong and very scary. The helmer behind such box office hits as the “Star Trek” reboot as well as some of the more intriguing fare to show up on television in the last few years, throw the name J.J. Abrams onto a project and speculation – and excitement – begins to run rampant. Was it a monster movie? A sequel to “Cloverfield”? Some even broke down the ending shot of this first teaser, frame by frame, in hopes of some clue as to what was to come. Now, just over a year later, we’re closing in on the film’s debut, and while newer trailers indicate that early speculation of a moody, more fierce film might have been a little off base, Abrams still delivers an edge-of-your-seat thriller with heart and humor that we predict will have audiences buzzing.

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Review: Despite All Its Little Foibles, 'X-Men: First Class' Is Near First Rate

By Drew Taylor
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June 1, 2011 3:30 AM
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12 Comments

While a titled cross has been key in "X-Men: First Class" iconography (as well as a huge part of its incessant and not-entirely-original marketing campaign), suggesting that "X" indeed does mark the spot, the symbol most associated with the highly anticipated sequel/prequel/reboot/whatever-the-fuck-it-is is a question mark. Things have been leaning to and fro in the buildup to the movie's release, with pros and cons both flying wildly. Its unequaled cast (including a mix of veterans and up-and-comers including Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Kevin Bacon, January Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult and more) was balanced out by reports of an insanely hectic and rushed shooting schedule (ten months to get through production and post-production) and the unvarnished interviews with director Matthew Vaughn, who claimed to have worked with five different cinematographers and was largely unaware of who the crew was on any particular day.

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Review: 'Good Neighbours' A Lackluster Thriller & A Whodunit Without A Mystery

By Kevin Jagernauth
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May 31, 2011 5:31 AM
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5 Comments

What happens when you're faced with the knowledge that you're neighbor is a serial killer? That's the question asked in "Good Neighbours" (it's a Canadian film, hence the spelling), the second collaboration between director Jacob Tierney and actor Jay Baruchel (they teamed on last year's tepid "The Trotsky"), a whodunit without a mystery and a thriller missing the thrills.

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Stage Review: Terry Gilliam's Opera 'The Damnation of Faust' Is A Return To Form & Then Some

By Oliver Lyttelton
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May 30, 2011 1:15 AM
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1 Comment

We've made no bones about our disappointment in Terry Gilliam's recent work. We absolutely have sympathy for the behind-the-scenes troubles that the helmer's suffered in recent years, with a string of bad luck almost unmatched among filmmakers, but unfortunately the work that has made it to the screens, from the Diet Gilliam of "The Brothers Grimm" to the gaudy, half-baked greatest hits set that was "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," has shown a director struggling to find his form.

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Book Review: 'Johnny Depp' Biography Could Use Some of Its Subject's Star Swagger

By Drew Taylor
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May 28, 2011 6:40 AM
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7 Comments

As last week’s staggering box office take for the lukewarm “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” proved (at the time of this writing it's amassed almost $500 million worldwide), audiences are still fascinated and entranced by Johnny Depp, even when his dandy mugging is overpowered by anthropomorphic pirate ships, killer mermaids, zombies, and Penelope Cruz’s cleavage. His pirate Captain Jack Sparrow, eyes smeared with mascara, gold teeth glinting, a long bone stuck in his hair, is the most special effect in a movie stuffed to the gills with computer-generated concoctions.

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Review: 'United Red Army' A Text Book Heavy Look At History

By Christopher Bell
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May 27, 2011 2:37 AM
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9 Comments

Let's say that 100 minutes is the perfect running time for a film and something that all types of audiences can get behind without complaint. Within that standard is about 20 minutes of leniency; remove that much and things feel brisk, tack on that much and different elements are allowed to flourish which is likely to lead to a more satisfying conclusion. But why does a movie exceeding two hours feel like work just by reading the running time? Even a 130 minute movie will induce some sort of sigh -- are those extra ten minutes really pushing things over the edge?

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Review: 'Kung Fu Panda 2' Is A Fast & Furry Action Adventure

By Drew Taylor
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May 27, 2011 2:01 AM
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0 Comments

Brad Bird, genius director of "The Iron Giant," "Ratatouille," and "The Incredibles," is fond of saying that animation isn't a genre, it's an art form. His point is that there can be animated versions of a wide array of cinematic genres – thrillers, say, or maybe westerns or even romantic comedies. He's right, of course; it's just that most animated movies that aren't made by Bird's compatriots at Pixar aim for that broad, middle-of-the-road buddy comedy bulls-eye. Which is why, when DreamWorks Animation's "Kung Fu Panda" was released in 2008, it was sort of shocking. Not because it was particularly revolutionary looking, and not because its narrative pushed any kind of boundaries. No, it felt genuinely fresh because "Kung Fu Panda" actually attempted to be a full-on, balls-to-the-walls martial arts action movie. And it mostly succeeded.

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