Parallax View

“The Woman in Black” has scared the bejesus out of audiences since first materializing in Susan Hill’s 1983 faux-gothic novel. Subsequently, this Victorian ghost story’s been adapted for British radio and television, and even for the stage. (The play opened in 1989 and is still selling tickets — the second-longest run in London history.) Now [...]

Asger Leth made his directorial bones with Ghosts of Cité Soleil, a hard-hitting documentary about the crime-ridden slums of Haiti’s Port-au-Prince, advertised as the most dangerous place on Earth. The multi-talented Leth also wrote, photographed and provided production design for “Ghosts,” which garnered good notices for visceral immediacy, as well as some critical cavils about [...]

First-time director Ralph Fiennes brings one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known tragic heroes to ferocious life in Coriolanus, played in modern dress but voiced in the bard’s eloquently corrosive language. Fiennes acted this anti-social über-soldier, based on a legendary Roman general, on the London stage in 2000 and came to believe that Coriolanus’ rise and fall might [...]

Images, lines, gestures, moods from the year’s films — Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Control (John Hurt), aced out of MI6 after the disaster in Budapest, announces, “Smiley is coming with me.” Smiley (Gary Oldman), his back to the camera, tilts his head a millimeter — surprise? acceptance? both?… — The Descendants: the sound Matt King’s [...]

From her first moments on-screen, Meryl Streep commanded the camera’s — and our — rapt gaze. It wasn’t just her luminous beauty. Even in early supporting roles, Streep’s acting radiated such remarkable passion and intelligence the Golden Girl stole center stage from anointed stars like Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. Delivering stellar performances that [...]

Welcome 2012 with one last look back at the best releases of 2011, as seen by the contributors to Parallax View. Critics listed in reverse alphabetical order Andrew Wright (as posted at Salt Lake Weekly) 1. Melancholia 2. Rise of the Planet of the Apes 3. Cave of Forgotten Dreams 4. 13 Assassins 5. Drive [...]

Few directors possess Steven Spielberg’s gift for imagining movie worlds with such dynamism and exhilarating cinematic precision. His Dickensian taste for tales of abandonment and reunion speaks to the lost child in all of us, defining the primal desire for home, in boy or man, alien or artificial intelligence, war or peace. But in some [...]

MSN Movies published its annual Best of the Year poll this week, featuring Top Ten lists from thirteen MSN writers including a trio of Parallax View contributors: Richard T. Jameson, Kathleen Murphy and Sean Axmaker. The rest of the line-up isn’t too shabby either: Jim Emerson, Don Kaye, Glenn Kenny, Kim Morgan, Mary Pols, James [...]

“How’d you find me?” inquires Noah Griffith (Jonah Hill), dazed survivor of a mad night’s journey into manhood. Smiling, his radiant girlfriend-to-be (Kylie Bunbury) quips: “I just followed the trail of bread crumbs.” That line’s a clue that The Sitter‘s something more than a buffet of superbad yuks and hijinks courtesy of the funny fat [...]

Opening with slices from four dead-ended lives and a series of stark white-on-black, screen-spanning plaints (“I don’t love my wife,” “I can’t get hard,” “I’m scared,” etc.), I Melt With You screams downer from the get-go. Director Mark Pellington dreamed up this story with writer Glenn Porter, possibly under the delusion they were crafting something like [...]

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy begins in darkness. Some of that dark shapes itself into silhouette, knocks on a door. A wizened old fellow materializes in a wedge of wan light: “You weren’t followed, were you? Will you come in?” And finally, “Trust no one.” Thus does director Tomas Alfredson formally signal the nature of the [...]

No less a filmmaker than Jane Campion gave her seal of approval to Sleeping Beauty, Australian novelist Julia Leigh’s writing-directing debut. It’s a mystery how the director of In the Cut and The Portrait of a Lady, uncompromising explorations of female psychosexuality, could find value in this dull preachment about the objectification of women — [...]

The morning started off grim: It was Sunday, and much too early, with heavy frost icing everything up, including my car. The theater was jam-packed with mommies and daddies and tykes, all of whom apparently lacked bladder control. Then the screen darkened, and a music video unreeled, starring prepubescent elf Justin Bieber, happily bopping around [...]

What are the odds of a silent movie, shot in black-and-white and the boxy old 1:33 screen ratio, wowing auds at this year’s Cannes Film Festival? Or that the star of such a throwback — Jean Dujardin, star of the OSS 117 spy spoofs — should show up in Entertainment Weekly as a potential Oscar [...]

If your faith in humankind has been taking some hits recently (inevitable if you keep up with the news), run, don’t walk, to SIFF’s Uptown Theater. Opening Friday, Nov. 11, Aki Kaurismäki’s marvelous Le Havre offers many pleasures, chief among them a dream of a world full of moving reunions, communal connections and celebrations, fraternité [...]