Films – Page 45 – Spinning Platters

Festival Preview: Berlin & Beyond Film Festival (Jan 14-20)

Screen Shot 2016-01-10 at 10.07.42 AM

The 20th Anniversary of the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival has an amazing lineup, set to entertain audiences from Jan. 14-17 at the Castro Theatre and Jan. 18-20 at the Goethe-Institut — Tickets available here. Until Thursday, we wanted to provide you with some quick highlights to check out as you’re buying tickets:

Opening night film Who Am I: No System is Safe, a hacker-heist film that draws inspiration from Fight Club, The Usual Suspects, and has no doubt inspired a lot of story elements in the Golden Globe award winning show, Mr. Robot. The young award winning star of Who Am I, Tom Schilling, will be in attendance.

Continue reading “Festival Preview: Berlin & Beyond Film Festival (Jan 14-20)”

Film Review: Anomalisa

Kaufman’s tale of existential despair benefits from stop-motion artistry

Michael (voice of David Thewlis) and Lisa (voice of Jennifer Jason Leigh) hit it off.

Writer/director Charlie Kaufman returns to exploring familiar themes of existential angst with Anomalisa, the first film he’s both written and directed since 2008’s Synechdoche, New York. Judging from this new film, Kaufman hasn’t suddenly embraced a positive, life-is-beautiful philosophy in the intervening six years; indeed, if anything, his new picture is even more heartbreaking and pessimistic.

Continue reading “Film Review: Anomalisa”

Film Review: The Revenant

Revenge is a dish best served cold and gorgeously shot.

This is it, everyone. This is the movie that Leonardo DiCaprio will win an Oscar for…I think. That’s not to say that The Revenant is Leo’s best performance. I’d say that it ranks a few titles above midway through his filmography, right above Blood Diamond and just below The Departed (and far below The Aviator and Revolutionary Road). Nevertheless, it’s Leo’s most physically demanding performance and let’s give credit to director/writer/producer Alejandro González Iñárritu for convincing the actor to dive so deep into the demands of the role. The Revenant is most impressive when experiencing its outstanding technical achievements. As a simple tale of survival and revenge, its not overly impressive from a storytelling standpoint. But in capturing the tone and setting of the story, the skill set of the actors and filmmakers on display lift The Revenant to very memorable heights.

Continue reading “Film Review: The Revenant”

Film Feature: Chad’s Top 10 Films of 2015

Spinning Platters film critics present their top 10 films of 2015

Spinning Platters film critics Carrie Kahn and Chad Liffmann each share their ten favorite films of 2015. Here is Chad’s list, presented in reverse-awesome order. Also check out Carrie‘s top ten list!

10.) Cinderella
Lily James emerging from her pumpkin-turned-coach.

A lack of the classic Disney song ‘Cinderelli!’ didn’t prevent Kenneth Branagh’s live action version of Cinderella from reaching magical heights. After a plethora of disappointing “re-imaginings” and “discover the true story” versions of classics — Maleficent, Alice in Wonderland, Oz the Great and Powerful — it was time for a movie to play it straight, and Cinderella did just that. With amazing performances from Lily James and Cate Blanchett and beautiful costumes and set designs, Cinderella (hopefully) represents the first in a new series of live action Disney remakes that stick to the strong source materials without egregious silly additions. (Read my full review of Cinderella here.)

Continue reading “Film Feature: Chad’s Top 10 Films of 2015”

Film Feature: Carrie’s Top 10 Films of 2015

Spinning Platters film critics present their top 10 films of 2015

Spinning Platters film critics Carrie Kahn and Chad Liffmann each share their ten favorite films of 2015. Here is Carrie’s list, presented in alphabetical order. (And you can find Chad’s here.)

1.) Brooklyn
Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) shares a tender moment with boyfriend Tony (Emory Cohen).

The immigrant experience in America is exquisitely captured in director John Crowley’s finely crafted film about love, loss, and longing in 1950s Brooklyn. Based on the novel by Colm Tóibín, Nick Hornby’s screenplay presents us with the intrepid young Irish woman Eilis, who leaves her family in the Irish countryside for adventure and opportunity in New York. Saoirse Ronan suberbly conveys Eilis’s gradual shift from shy newcomer to confident cosmopolitan. Called back home for a family emergency, Eilis must choose between familiar comforts and new possibilities, and Ronan depicts Eilis’s struggle with heartrending openness and aching honesty. Emory Cohen and Domhnall Gleeson, as competing suitors on opposite sides of the Atlantic, also deliver strong, sharply drawn performances.

Continue reading “Film Feature: Carrie’s Top 10 Films of 2015”

Film Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the New Star Wars Movie

han-chiew-force-awakens-1280jpg-8e4aaf_1280w — One has aged. The other has not.

[KINDA SPOILERS AHEAD]

Don’t let my subtitle fool you—I actually really enjoyed Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I saw it twice and can’t wait to see it again! However, as one of the most highly anticipated films in decades and what will likely be the highest grossing film of all time in the next week (with every word I type it probably makes another $1 million), it was hard to put all my thoughts together in an unbiased film review — after all, I don’t want to be one of the few saying “it’s really not that good”. But what I know now is that as The Force Awakens has marinated in my mind over the past two weeks, I now know that I didn’t just like the film, I actually loved the film. Everything I initially took exception to I have now found justification for, and that’s how my review will unfold:

Continue reading “Film Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

Film Review: The Hateful Eight

The Hateful Great, This Ain’t.

HatefulSam — Samuel L Jackson in Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight

Your typical Quentin Tarantino movie is full of scenes that are powder kegs ready to explode, full of characters you can’t trust, and smart, crackling dialogue that keeps you constantly entertained. But what if the dialog stopped being smart and crackling? You’d have The Hateful Eight.

Continue reading “Film Review: The Hateful Eight”

Film Review: Daddy’s Home

You won’t want to go home to this Daddy

Brad (Will Ferrell, left) tries to find common ground with Dusty (Mark Wahlberg, r.), his wife’s ex-husband and the father of Brad’s step-children.

Back in 2010, Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg starred in a middling buddy cop movie called The Other Guys, which at least had the benefit of being directed by Adam McKay, who directed Ferrell in the well-received Anchorman movies, and is currently garnering deserved praise for the very smart and very funny The Big Short. McKay’s early, relatively innocuous effort pairing Ferrell and Wahlberg, however, looks like the Hamlet of movie comedies compared to the newest film featuring the duo, a lazy, paint-by-numbers, dispiriting picture called Daddy’s Home.

Continue reading “Film Review: Daddy’s Home”

Film Review: Sisters

You’ll have a good time partying with these Sisters

Sisters Kate (Tina Fey, l.) and Maura (Amy Poehler) throw an epic party at their childhood home.

Believe it or not, there actually are other films being released today aside from that minor little sci-fi picture that, for some reason, seems to have attracted a fair bit of media attention (kidding, people, kidding!). One of those movies daring to go up against The Most Anticipated Opening Ever is Sisters, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey’s bright, serviceable new comedy.

Continue reading “Film Review: Sisters”

Film Review: Carol

The price of love: Blanchett, Mara deliver powerful performances in period romance

Carol (Cate Blanchett, l.) shares a tender moment with Therese (Rooney Mara).

Director Todd Haynes returns to familiar settings and themes in his new film Carol, a picture that can be considered a companion piece to his excellent 2002 film Far from Heaven. Both films are set on the east coast in the 1950s, and both concern the suppression of true selves and true loves under the weight of a repressive and unaccepting society.

Continue reading “Film Review: Carol”