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1-20 of 54 articles from 2009 « Prev | Next »
Peter Debruge’s Top 10 of 2009
30 December 2009 11:08 PM, PST
| Collider.com
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A rough year, you say? Maybe for your 401(k). Hollywood raked it in, enjoying record box office numbers, while the indie and foreign lineup (though spread between fewer companies perhaps) yielded an unprecedented number of treasures. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I had such a hard time cutting my best-of list off at 10. Surveying my choices, I’m hard-pressed to find a common theme. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I might even wonder what kind of critic can love a G-rated Japanese-animated cartoon and Lars von Trier’s genital-mutilation opus in the same breath, or reconcile the esoteric with the popcorn populism of James Cameron’s Avatar. But there you have it. Of the 274 first-run and festival films I saw last year (that’s as many movies as qualified for Oscar consideration in 2009 - though not the same ones), the 10 best are
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- Peter Debruge
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Bowing Down to Paul Bettany
23 December 2009 9:36 PM, PST
| ifc.com
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British actor Paul Bettany has the dashing looks and commanding presence of a leading man, but his filmography bolsters the case that he's not a creature of vanity or easy paychecks. Whether comparing his drunken Chaucer in "A Knight's Tale" to his ruthless thug in "Gangster No. 1," or his hypocritical do-gooder in Lars von Trier's arthouse masterpiece "Dogville" to his self-flagellating albino monk in a splashy blockbuster like "The Da Vinci Code," Bettany continually proves himself an intelligent and versatile performer who's passionate about new career challenges.
In director Jean-Marc Vallée's luxurious new biopic "The Young Victoria," Bettany co-stars as Lord Melbourne, a Prime Minister who became the 18-year-old, freshly ascended Queen Victoria's self-serving political tutor. Set in 1837, the film portraitizes Victoria (Emily Blunt) as we haven't seen her: a progressive-minded, spirited beauty in the early days of her reign and her courtship with Prince Albert
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- Aaron Hillis
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Films Of The Decade – Ed’s List
23 December 2009 5:17 PM, PST
| FilmShaft.com
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Each decade of celluloid is defined by its psychological preoccupations. Oh yes it is, don’t look at me like that. The 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington cast a long shadow over the first decade of the 21st century. The Nineties had been a relatively stable and optimistic era by comparison and was all the more moribund for it. Tom Sizemore’s speech in Katherine Bigelow’s Strange Days (1995) summed up the emerging consensus – “everything’s been done, every kind of music’s been tried, every government’s been tried, every fuckin’ hairstyle. How you gonna make it another thousand years, for Chrissake?”
But it wasn’t quite the end of history after all. After 9/11 the zeitgeist became politically-charged once more as it had been in more polarised times. Entertainment was not immune from this effect, nor could it afford to be. With rare exceptions such as Paul Greengrass
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- Ed Whitfield
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Best films of the noughties No 8: Dogville | Xan Brooks
23 December 2009 12:00 AM, PST
| The Guardian - Film News
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In his 2003 masterwork, Lars von Trier gave us America on a soundstage, stripped back to lay bare a culture of cruelty
Lars von Trier's Dogville gives us America on a soundstage and a Rocky Mountain township rendered in chalk marks on the floor. It is Von Trier's America and Von Trier's township, and this enraged some viewers who dismissed the film as a crude, blinkered diatribe from a man too timid (on account of his aversion to air travel) to actually visit the country for himself. And yes, Dogville is crude and arguably blinkered as well. But it is also electrifying, gripping and audacious: the work of a director at the peak of his powers.
Nicole Kidman stars as Grace, a peroxide Jesus on the run from a band of Depression-era gangsters, who takes refuge with "the good, honest folk of Dogville". Her chief protector is Tom – a wide-eyed,
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- Xan Brooks
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Decade in Review: 2004 Top Ten
14 December 2009 6:56 PM, PST
| FilmExperience
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Moving on to 2004. What follows is my original top ten list, based on films released in NYC in 2004. If I have anything new to say that'll be in red after the original text.
Top Ten Runners Up (in descending order): Aviator, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Mean Girls, Maria Full of Grace, The Five Obstructions, Collateral, Goodbye Lenin!, Birth and Closer Yes, I'm absolutely horrified by the rankings now. Nothing about that ranking feels right now. I am most ashamed that Birth was only at number [cough] 19 in its year. In my self-flattering memory I "almost" put it in the top ten despite the then brutal reviews. I was ahead of my time! Oh well... at least I did actually name it the #1 most underappreciated film of the year. At the time I said...
Jonathan Glazer made a significant splash four years ago when his brilliantly acted heist film Sexy Beast
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- NATHANIEL R
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Come Back to Me...Or Not.
11 December 2009 4:12 AM, PST
| FilmExperience
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Jose here with a look at one of the most misunderstood performances of the decade.
Nicole Kidman is arguably the actress of the decade. The woman did everything in the past ten years: thrillers, Ingmar Bergman redux, classy biopics, astonishing musicals, big special effects epics and even Lars von Trier. The last few years however have been full of incomprehensible Kidman hate (if this were the 1930's she'd be deemed box office poison and sent to oblivion).
The backlash began with the release of Cold Mountain Anthony Minghella's Civil War epic which some had decided would be the new Gone With the Wind the minute it started shooting. When it was released and Nicole's Ada Monroe just wasn't Scarlett O'Hara, it was as if people decided Nicole had cheated them from what they all thought would be a third consecutive Best Actress Oscar nomination (it says a lot that
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- Jose
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The Naughts: The Actress of the '00s
4 December 2009 10:17 AM, PST
| ifc.com
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If time is an avenger, then the Naughts have had it both ways with Nicole Kidman. In the span of a decade, Kidman was transformed from arm candy into an artist -- the rare movie star who made genuinely interesting choices -- eclipsing her ex-husband, Tom Cruise, who filed for divorce in 2000, with an Oscar win and the embrace, finally, of her peers on her own terms.
However, as the '00s limp to a close, Kidman seems to be succumbing to a personal vendetta against time: by manipulating her face into a mask -- a waxworks ideal of "Nicole Kidman" -- rather than continuing to deploy it as a functional instrument, an artist's tool, Kidman is taking perhaps the most surprising risk of her career: she has chosen to age into glacial iconicity. In this, she exemplifies a decade that treated actresses with ambivalence, waving all the flags of
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- Michelle Orange
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Directors of the Decade: Lars von Trier
27 November 2009 3:39 PM, PST
| FilmExperience
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Robert here, continuing my series of the directors that shaped the past 10 years. I know I promised another Pixar guy last week and we’ll get to him soon. But since everyone just finished celebrating the ultimate American holiday, I thought I’d appropriately take a look at one of the country’s greatest cinematic cheerleaders. A man who has never been to America but makes so many films about it, it's obvious he really loves the place. Lars von Trier
Number of Films: Six (or Five and a half, considering a co-director credit)
Modern Masterpieces: Probably none. I feel like I’ve been overly generous with this term since I denied it to Scorsese back in entry #1. Still the film that comes closest is Dogville
Total Disasters: No total disasters but several partial ones.
Better than you remember: None. Actually all of Von Trier’s films this decade have been pretty accurately received.
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- Robert
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Nathaniel Thanks You
26 November 2009 5:00 PM, PST
| FilmExperience
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I am surely in a friend & food coma while you're reading this. Happily so! This Thanksgiving I'm grateful for all of you. You keep coming back daily to read the latest cinematic musings here at The Film Experience. Obsessing on the movies is really meant to be a team sport so I appreciate the fine company. They don't make movie theaters with one seat in them.
So thank you for being here daily from all over the world -- not just the States -- with an especially amorphous shout out to readers in Canada, the UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Spain, France, Mexico and The Philippines. You've always been supportive. And a big hug to my magical elves contributors who've really helped keep the blog going during a difficult year.
Normal programming resumes tomorrow but I must give thanks to the following sources of cinematic happiness at the moment: ambiguous endings,
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- NATHANIEL R
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"I Don't Hate Women": Lars von Trier on Antichrist
23 November 2009 12:03 PM, PST
| Rotten Tomatoes
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Danish auteur Lars von Trier is used to controversy following his films; some of his critics have even accused him of courting it for sensationalism and reaction. Yet even with a career that contains the likes of The Idiots (rich kids mocking the handicapped), Dancer in the Dark (which drove star Bjork to never act again) and Dogville (leveled with charges of misogyny and anti-Americanism), the director's latest may be his crowning achievement in outrage. When it debuted at Cannes earlier this year, Antichrist -- starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a grieving couple who retreat to idyllic woodland
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Exclusive Interview: Chris Alexander talks to Lars Von Trier about Antichrist
12 November 2009 8:33 AM, PST
| Fangoria
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One of my favorite contemporary filmmakers has long been Danish enfant terrible Lars Von Trier. From the wrenching delirium of Breaking The Waves, to the vulgar, experimental excess of The Idiots, to the haunting musical melodrama of Dancer In The Dark to the mad stunt Dogville, there really is no one else alive like Von Trier...and he knows it.
And now he's made a horror film.
Perhaps you've heard of Antichrist, the mind bending, soul wounding art house exploitation masterpiece starring singer turned actress Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of Jane Birkin and iconic French pop culture figure Serge Gainsbourg) as a woman driven into sexually charged madness - and beyond - by the accidental death of her toddler son.
Read my review of the film here and check out Fangoria's coverage of the film in the current issue.
Imagine my surprise then, when the opportunity arose for me to interview my living idol,
»
- no-reply@fangoria.com (Chris Alexander)
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Exclusive Interview: Chris Alexander talks to Lars Von Trier about Antichrist
12 November 2009 8:33 AM, PST
| Fangoria
| See recent Fangoria news
»
One of my favorite contemporary filmmakers has long been Danish enfant terrible Lars Von Trier. From the wrenching delirium of Breaking The Waves, to the vulgar, experimental excess of The Idiots, to the haunting musical melodrama of Dancer In The Dark to the mad stunt Dogville, there really is no one else alive like Von Trier...and he knows it.
And now he's made a horror film.
Perhaps you've heard of Antichrist, the mind bending, soul wounding art house exploitation masterpiece starring singer turned actress Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of Jane Birkin and iconic French pop culture figure Serge Gainsbourg) as a woman driven into sexually charged madness - and beyond - by the accidental death of her toddler son.
Read my review of the film here and check out Fangoria's coverage of the film in the current issue.
Imagine my surprise then, when the opportunity arose for me to interview my living idol,
»
- no-reply@fangoria.com (Chris Alexander)
Permalink | Report a problem
Exclusive Interview: Chris Alexander talks to Lars Von Trier about Antichrist
12 November 2009 8:33 AM, PST
| Fangoria
| See recent Fangoria news
»
One of my favorite contemporary filmmakers has long been Danish enfant terrible Lars Von Trier. From the wrenching delirium of Breaking The Waves, to the vulgar, experimental excess of The Idiots, to the haunting musical melodrama of Dancer In The Dark to the mad stunt Dogville, there really is no one else alive like Von Trier...and he knows it.
And now he's made a horror film.
Perhaps you've heard of Antichrist, the mind bending, soul wounding art house exploitation masterpiece starring singer turned actress Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of Jane Birkin and iconic French pop culture figure Serge Gainsbourg) as a woman driven into sexually charged madness - and beyond - by the accidental death of her toddler son.
Read my review of the film here and check out Fangoria's coverage of the film in the current issue.
Imagine my surprise then, when the opportunity arose for me to interview my living idol,
»
- no-reply@fangoria.com (Chris Alexander)
Permalink | Report a problem
Exclusive Interview: Chris Alexander talks to Lars Von Trier about Antichrist
12 November 2009 8:33 AM, PST
| Fangoria
| See recent Fangoria news
»
One of my favorite contemporary filmmakers has long been Danish enfant terrible Lars Von Trier. From the wrenching delirium of Breaking The Waves, to the vulgar, experimental excess of The Idiots, to the haunting musical melodrama of Dancer In The Dark to the mad stunt Dogville, there really is no one else alive like Von Trier...and he knows it.
And now he's made a horror film.
Perhaps you've heard of Antichrist, the mind bending, soul wounding art house exploitation masterpiece starring singer turned actress Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of Jane Birkin and iconic French pop culture figure Serge Gainsbourg) as a woman driven into sexually charged madness - and beyond - by the accidental death of her toddler son.
Read my review of the film here and check out Fangoria's coverage of the film in the current issue.
Imagine my surprise then, when the opportunity arose for me to interview my living idol,
»
- no-reply@fangoria.com (Chris Alexander)
Permalink | Report a problem
Exclusive Interview: Chris Alexander talks to Lars Von Trier about Antichrist
12 November 2009 8:33 AM, PST
| Fangoria
| See recent Fangoria news
»
One of my favorite contemporary filmmakers has long been Danish enfant terrible Lars Von Trier. From the wrenching delirium of Breaking The Waves, to the vulgar, experimental excess of The Idiots, to the haunting musical melodrama of Dancer In The Dark to the mad stunt Dogville, there really is no one else alive like Von Trier...and he knows it.
And now he's made a horror film.
Perhaps you've heard of Antichrist, the mind bending, soul wounding art house exploitation masterpiece starring singer turned actress Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of Jane Birkin and iconic French pop culture figure Serge Gainsbourg) as a woman driven into sexually charged madness - and beyond - by the accidental death of her toddler son.
Read my review of the film here and check out Fangoria's coverage of the film in the current issue.
Imagine my surprise then, when the opportunity arose for me to interview my living idol,
»
- no-reply@fangoria.com (Chris Alexander)
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tMF Perspectives: Lars von Trier's Antichrist, Roger Ebert and Dogville's 'Poetic effect'!
25 October 2009 6:26 PM, PDT
| The Movie Fanatic
| See recent The Movie Fanatic news
»
If you're going to ask me who is one of today's most controversial filmmakers, I would not hesitate with my answer: Lars von Trier. His latest film, Antichrist, "managed consistent sell-outs in New York City" [ INDIEWire reports ]. In addition to the box office results, there are two particular reviews I'm very interested about: CNN's and Roger Ebert's...
- - -
- - -
CNN called the movie 'an atrocity', while Roger Ebert, who once wrote a scathing review of von Trier's Dogville [ more about this Golden Palm winner after the jump], has this to say:
More than anything else, I responded to the performances. Feature films may be fiction, but they are certainly documentaries showing actors in front of a camera. Both Dafoe and Gainsbourg have been risk takers, as anyone working with von Trier must be. The ways they're called upon to act in this film are extraordinary. They respond without hesitation. More important, they convince. [ read more ]
The trailer and
»
- modelwatcher@gmail.com (Jed Medina)
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tMF Perspectives: Lars von Trier's Antichrist, Roger Ebert and Dogville's 'Poetic effect'!
25 October 2009 6:26 PM, PDT
| The Movie Fanatic
| See recent The Movie Fanatic news
»
If you're going to ask me who is one of today's most controversial filmmakers, I would not hesitate with my answer: Lars von Trier. His latest film, Antichrist, "managed consistent sell-outs in New York City" [ INDIEWire reports ]. In addition to the box office results, there are two particular reviews I'm very interested about: CNN's and Roger Ebert's...
- - -
- - -
CNN called the movie 'an atrocity', while Roger Ebert, who once wrote a scathing review of von Trier's Dogville [ more about this Golden Palm winner after the jump], has this to say:
More than anything else, I responded to the performances. Feature films may be fiction, but they are certainly documentaries showing actors in front of a camera. Both Dafoe and Gainsbourg have been risk takers, as anyone working with von Trier must be. The ways they're called upon to act in this film are extraordinary. They respond without hesitation. More important, they convince. [ read more ]
The trailer and
»
- modelwatcher@gmail.com (Jed Medina)
Permalink | Report a problem
tMF Perspectives: Lars von Trier's Antichrist, Roger Ebert and Dogville's 'Poetic effect'!
25 October 2009 6:26 PM, PDT
| The Movie Fanatic
| See recent The Movie Fanatic news
»
If you're going to ask me who is one of today's most controversial filmmakers, I would not hesitate with my answer: Lars von Trier. His latest film, Antichrist, "managed consistent sell-outs in New York City" [ INDIEWire reports ]. In addition to the box office results, there are two particular reviews I'm very interested about: CNN's and Roger Ebert's...
- - -
- - -
CNN called the movie 'an atrocity', while Roger Ebert, who once wrote a scathing review of von Trier's Dogville [ more about this Golden Palm winner after the jump], has this to say:
More than anything else, I responded to the performances. Feature films may be fiction, but they are certainly documentaries showing actors in front of a camera. Both Dafoe and Gainsbourg have been risk takers, as anyone working with von Trier must be. The ways they're called upon to act in this film are extraordinary. They respond without hesitation. More important, they convince. [ read more ]
The trailer and
»
- modelwatcher@gmail.com (Jed Medina)
Permalink | Report a problem
tMF Perspectives: Lars von Trier's Antichrist, Roger Ebert and Dogville's 'Poetic effect'!
25 October 2009 6:26 PM, PDT
| The Movie Fanatic
| See recent The Movie Fanatic news
»
If you're going to ask me who is one of today's most controversial filmmakers, I would not hesitate with my answer: Lars von Trier. His latest film, Antichrist, "managed consistent sell-outs in New York City" [ INDIEWire reports ]. In addition to the box office results, there are two particular reviews I'm very interested about: CNN's and Roger Ebert's...
- - -
- - -
CNN called the movie 'an atrocity', while Roger Ebert, who once wrote a scathing review of von Trier's Dogville [ more about this Golden Palm winner after the jump], has this to say:
More than anything else, I responded to the performances. Feature films may be fiction, but they are certainly documentaries showing actors in front of a camera. Both Dafoe and Gainsbourg have been risk takers, as anyone working with von Trier must be. The ways they're called upon to act in this film are extraordinary. They respond without hesitation. More important, they convince. [ read more ]
The trailer and
»
- modelwatcher@gmail.com (Jed Medina)
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'Antichrist': Lost In The Woods, By Kurt Loder
23 October 2009 6:51 AM, PDT
| MTV Movie News
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»
The movie that scandalized Cannes finally arrives Stateside. Your move.
Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe in .Antichrist.
Photo: Zentropa Entertainments
Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist" is a curious mash-up of cutting-edge torture-porn and good old porn-porn that fails on both fronts. Despite some wild gore touches that might draw gasps of admiration from the likes of Eli Roth, the picture is too preoccupied with Von Trier's dismal deep thoughts to exert the crass visceral grip an effective splatter flick requires. And despite a few graphic sex shots, the movie is coldly anti-erotic. What it most precisely evokes are the art-film pretensions of the early 1960s, when European auteurs could get away with a line like "acorns don't cry" and American aficionados were disinclined to complain. (Imagine how those old Resnais and Antonioni head-scratchers might have been enlivened by a few strategically placed insertion shots!) The movie's most problematic aspect, though,
»
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