5
Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief is the latest attempt at a neo-noir film from writer-director Pablo D’Stair, and while it may be as challenging to get through as his previous entry, A Public Ransom, this proves to be vastly more rewarding and a marked improvement.
5.5
Over the last few years, the zombie genre has kept a foothold on the horror market, with filmmakers constantly trying to add a new twist on the concept of the undead plague. With Goal of the Dead, we see zombies hit the pitch with a soccer-themed tale of survival after a stadium full of fans gets infected with a deadly virus, turning everyone into ravenous ghouls.
6.5
Based on the John le Carré novel by the same name, Anton Corbijn’s A Most Wanted Man strips away the stylish veneer of other adaptations such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and brings us a slow burn spy flick that manages to be just barely entertaining despite the great cast and decent performances.
5.5
With a title like Gun Woman, there’s a certain expectation one has even before knowing anything about the film. In the case of Kurando Mitsutake’s latest grindhouse throwback, it delivers on its title and them some. This is a nasty little film that should only be viewed by the most ardent exploitation fans who know that, in this genre, sometimes bad is actually good.
7
It's been a decade since South Korean writer/director Jang Joon-hwan's debut feature, Save the Green Planet!, an amalgamation of almost every genre swirling around a mentally unstable central character affected by his traumatized past; while, Hwayi: A Monster Boy plays out like a typical action film, the central character's storyline possesses a number of similarities with that of Save the Green Planet! as Hwayi (Yeo Jin-gu) struggles to cope with his own trauma-filled past while slowly uncovering the sinister secrets behind his upbringing.
5
Although the idea of Ron Howard directing a documentary revolving around Jay-Z’s Made in America festival in Philadelphia may sound like an interesting team-up, the result is a fairly by-the-numbers concert movie that tries a bit too hard explaining the American dream through the backstories of some of the most popular working musicians today.
6
Some of the most intriguing and exciting films over the last decade have come out of South Korea, so I was looking forward to seeing and reviewing one of the country’s latest exports – Cold Eyes (Gam-si-ja-deul). Although the film does not equal more famous and lauded films, such as Mother, Oldboy, and I Saw the Devil, it holds its own over a two-hour run and is a solid effort from directors Ui-seok Jo and Byung-seo Kim and a large cast of cops and robbers.
5.5
The football hooligan film genre is one that’s had many entries in the UK moview scene over the last several years. Films like Football Factory, Green Street Hooligans, The Firm, Cass and others have been giving us a glimpse into the reckless lives of football hooligans, the violent gangs of soccer fans known for clashing in the streets of England. Many of these movies share the same themes, tone and even actors, and director Nick Nevern seems well aware of this when looking to deconstruct this now-tired genre in The Hooligan Factory. In this spoof, Nevern, who also stars, aims to make the ultimate hooligan movie so there won’t be any need to make a Green Street 4.
10
For the amount of creative surrealism contained within Gondry's film adaptation of Boris Vian's novel, Froth on the Daydream, Mood Indigo happens to be a touching tale of the life cycle of love at its core, bursting with inventive flights of fancy as Gondry's seemingly inexhaustible imagination runs roughshod throughout the streets of Paris. At any and all opportunity Gondry, in true Vian fashion, marries one object to another creating an endless array of Seussian contraptions tailor-made to showcase the director's highly-imaginative visual skill set such as the pianocktail, crawling doorbells, musical strings of sunshine and much more.
7.5
Wish I Was Here, plays out very much like a spiritual successor to Zach Braff’s previous film, 2004’s Garden State. While Garden State saw Braff as a disenchanted and lost soul leaving his twenties, Wish I Was Here sees Braff in his next stage of life, dealing with children, money, and death.
4.5
In the near future, we live in a country that allows us to commit whatever heinous acts of violence we want, and it’s called “The Purge.” This ritual creates a better place to live, allowing us to get out all of our aggression in one fell swoop on an annual basis.
While this concept is a compelling one, and should in theory make for an entertaining horror film, the first film in this series, The Purge, proved to be little more than a home-invasion thriller. Now, a year later, director James DeMonaco aims to show us the movie we all wanted out of the first one. However, after seeing The Purge: Anarchy, I’m still left wanting more from the series.
7.5
Equally as impressive as its title is long, the new coffee table book Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Rise of the Planet of the Apes The Art of the Films is a detailed and informative collection of stills from both of the recent Apes reboots. Compiling hundreds of behind-the-scenes photos, concept art, stills, and production materials, this high-quality hardcover is a must-have for the discerning lover of the series.
7
Robbie (David Dahlbom), the main character in Nathan Silver's latest effort, Uncertain Terms, finds himself at a marital crossroad at the age of 30, retreating to the New York countryside to think things over while occupying his time with odd jobs in and around his Aunt's estate which happens to be a group home of sorts for pregnant teens. Perhaps, not the best place for a brooding, strong-silent type like himself to be pondering the next step in his strained marriage.
8.5
Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a much better film than it really has any right to be. It’s a big-budget Hollywood sequel to a big-budget Hollywood reboot that no one was really asking for that also happened to be quite good. Dawn one-ups its predecessor in almost every way, combining jaw-dropping visuals with a compelling story and rich characters the viewer actually cares for.
9
Shot for a span of over twelve years, Richard Linklater’s latest, Boyhood, is one of the most ambitious and touching films I’ve seen in some time. This nearly three-hour journey displays an interesting portrait of an American family, and although the narrative is deceptively simple, this is a film like no other.
4.5
Coming of age stories may be the most popular genre of indie filmmaking, and perhaps this is because the storyline is a flexible one, ensuring there is much agitation in a story to propel the protagonist without offering exactly how the story will resolve. The same is not true for love stories, for example. Argentinian writer/director Matias Lucchesi's first feature, Natural Sciences, the search for self is dressed in Lila's (Petra Hertzog) insuppressible need to find her father.
