Thompson on Hollywood

EXCLUSIVE CLIP & Interview with 'Starlet' Director Sean Baker on Keeping it Vérité with Dree Hemingway

Festivals

Sean Baker's second feature, "Prince of Broadway," a micro-budget vérité film shot in New York City's wholesale fashion district, won a slew of festival awards after its debut at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2008 (winning Best Narrative Feature) and landed on many Best of 2010 lists...

By Sophia Savage
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November 9, 2012 2:04 PM
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Now and Then: 'Your Sister's Sister,' Lost in the Oscar Shuffle

Reviews

As much as I enjoy awards chatter, this time of year can be frustrating. Spring, summer, even early fall releases that merit attention melt away before the campaigns of the heavy hitters. Lynn Shelton's lovely character study "Your Sister's Sister" won't factor in the Oscar race, and maybe it doesn't deserve to. But it surely deserves your eyes.

By Matt Brennan
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November 6, 2012 3:52 PM
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Now and Then: After the Storm, Portraits of Tenacity in Recovery

Reviews

As a resident of a city whose history of storms — and their concomitant unnatural disasters — is troubled at best, I watched Sandy warily but distantly. Thing always look different outside the "cone of uncertainty." The images coming in from the Northeast this morning put me in a more solemn frame of mind.

By Matt Brennan
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October 30, 2012 12:02 PM
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Immersed in Movies: Talking 'Cloud Atlas' VFX

Features

"Cloud Atlas" might not approach the VFX intensity or complexity of "The Matrix" trilogy or "Speed Racer," but it still required the same level of sophistication and flexibility that the Wachowskis demand. After all, you've got six stories about reincarnation spanning 500 years with the same actors in multiple roles...

By Bill Desowitz
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October 29, 2012 5:07 PM
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Now and Then: 'Four,' Moving Portrait of Love and Sex in the Time of Craigslist

Reviews

"Four," director Joshua Sanchez's remarkably honest, empathic adaptation of Christopher Shinn's play about a quartet of lovelorn folks in a modern age, works on you slowly. It's taken me about a week since seeing it at the New Orleans Film Festival to suss out just how complex and world weary it is, and how surprisingly beautiful.

By Matt Brennan
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October 23, 2012 12:47 PM
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Now and Then: At NOFF, Indie Comedies 'It's a Disaster' and 'Supporting Characters' Impress

Reviews

"It's a Disaster" is something you title your film only if you have a lot of faith in the project. The pun, for a critic disposed to go negative, is almost pathetically easy. Fortunately for writer/director Todd Berger, such confidence is well deserved. "It's a Disaster" is hilarious.

By Matt Brennan
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October 16, 2012 11:52 AM
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NOFF Review: Weinstein Oscar-Fodder 'Quartet' Stars Maggie Smith

Reviews

Like "The King's Speech," "Quartet" is musty and middlebrow, set in an imagined Britain of high class and low jokes. What it lacks in period pedigree it makes up for in a steady diet of quips from the form's reigning dowager, Maggie Smith. In The Weinstein Company's hands, it will likely earn solid box office and awards attention.

By Matt Brennan
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October 15, 2012 4:27 PM
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New Orleans Film Festival Review: Melissa Leo Amazes in 'Francine'

Reviews

Strange and unsettling, "Francine" begins as a miniature, a doll's house of life's loose ends. Subtly, though, it blooms. On the strength of Melissa Leo's astounding performance, it pushes outward into a troubled society of haves and have-nots — becoming, quietly but forcefully, one of the best films of the year.

By Matt Brennan
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October 14, 2012 4:46 PM
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Now and Then: 'Decoding Deepak,' or What the Bleep Does He Know?

Reviews

Early in "Decoding Deepak," the titular spiritualist and his filmmaker son float languidly over Thailand's Chao Phraya river delta, on their way to the former's ordination as a Buddhist monk. "Don't try to make sense of it, just roll the cameras and try to keep up," the director sighs. Mission accomplished.

By Matt Brennan
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October 9, 2012 4:04 PM
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Now and Then: 'Looper' and the Future of Sci Fi

Reviews

Deep into "Looper" we meet Sara (Emily Blunt), a young mother and cane farmer in the year 2044. The moment, for science fiction, is riskily quiet — in the first blush of dusk she mimes lighting a cigarette, taking a slow drag on imagined bliss. It's also, for all the film's nodding at the genre's past, a glimpse of where sci fi is going.