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Broken Embraces

The new Pedro Almodóvar film is a complicated business, with stories built inside one another and subplots leading off in furtive directions, like tunnels. We meet Harry Caine (Lluís Homar), a blind screenwriter and former director, who, when he is not ...

From ANTHONY LANE, The New Yorker,  23 Nov 2009

2012

One day Roland Emmerich will take a breather and give us a modest, thinly peopled costume drama in which, at the climax, somebody drops a teacup, but that day has not yet dawned. For now, the maker of “Godzilla” and “The Day After Tomorrow” remains ...

From ANTHONY LANE, The New Yorker,  23 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Roland Emmerich,  John Cusack,  Amanda Peet,  Thandie Newton,  Chiwetel Ejiofor

Anthony Lane: "Broken Embraces" and "2012."

How many tales are told in the course of “Broken Embraces,” the new film from Pedro Almodóvar? People keep interrupting themselves, or changing direction, in order to embark upon a story. People, that is, like the screenwriter Harry Caine (Lluís Homar) ...

From ANTHONY LANE, The New Yorker,  16 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Anthony Lane,  Michael Powell,  Louis Malle,  Michael Caine,  Antonio Banderas

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Believe it or not, the U.S. Army used to contain a special unit that was devoted exclusively to the use of psychic power as a tool of war. That, at any rate, is the scoop dug up by Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), an eager reporter based in Ann Arbor, ...

From ANTHONY LANE, The New Yorker,  9 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Ewan McGregor,  George Clooney,  Jeff Bridges,  Grant Heslov,  Kevin Spacey

Anthony Lane: The Road to Ruin

The best way to think of “Detour,” which shows at BAM on Nov. 16, is as a kind of anti-“Cleopatra.” Instead of hiring a cast of thousands and spending millions on an endless shoot, do what the director Edgar G. Ulmer did in 1945: restrict your action ...

From ANTHONY LANE, The New Yorker,  9 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Anthony Lane

Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire

How you respond to Lee Daniels’s film is likely to depend on two variables: first, to what extent the preposterous title will get your tongue in a twist, and second, whether or not you object to having extreme domestic abuse waved in front of your face. ...

From ANTHONY LANE, The New Yorker,  9 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Lee Daniels,  Gabourey Sidibe,  Paula Patton,  Mariah Carey

Anthony Lane: Rambling Man

“Are you staying or going?” That question, put to the brooding, itinerant Aldo (Steve Cochran), resounds through Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1957 film “Il Grido,” which screens at BAM on Nov. 9. It remains one of his least recognized films but also one of ...

From ANTHONY LANE, The New Yorker,  2 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Anthony Lane,  Michelangelo Antonioni,  Alida Valli,  Betsy Blair

Antichrist

What are we meant to do with the new film from Lars von Trier? Stare in wonderment, stare in horror, throw up, walk out, or laugh? Each response will have its adherents, and von Trier hasn’t lost his talent for dividing an audience. Whether he can any ...

From ANTHONY LANE, The New Yorker,  26 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Lars von Trier,  Willem Dafoe

Anthony Lane: "Antichrist."

It would be a shock if “Antichrist” had turned out to be anything but shocking. After all, the giving of offense has long been the stock-in-trade of its writer and director, Lars von Trier, the man who brought us “Breaking the Waves,” “The Idiots,” and ...

From ANTHONY LANE, The New Yorker,  19 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Anthony Lane,  Lars von Trier,  Willem Dafoe

The Invention of Lying

No one has ever lied, and deception is unknown. Such is the truth-loving, and downright creepy, world that is presented in this new comedy, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson. Gervais also stars as Mark, a chubby loser who ...

From ANTHONY LANE, The New Yorker,  12 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Ricky Gervais,  Matthew Robinson,  Tina Fey,  Rob Lowe,  Jennifer Garner

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