NYFF52 Review: Pasolini (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


Controversial Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini finally gets a kind of a biopic in Pasolini, starring Willem Dafoe. A journalist, poet, and philosopher among other things, the homosexual Pasolini is a tough subject to try to encapsulate in a film, especially one with as short a running time as this one's 87 minutes. Director Abel Ferrara, no stranger to controversy himself, wisely chooses to simply focus on the final days leading up to Pasolini's lurid murder. The resulting film is, like the director, a study of contradictions and not just a little perplexing.

Movie Review: A Most Wanted Man (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

As far as a match-up of material and filmmaker goes, I can think of no better one than that promised by A Most Wanted Man. Director Anton Corbijn's last feature, The American, was an existential thriller that kept George Clooney's introspective hitman squarely in its crosshairs. So what better director to take on John le Carré's typical contemplative spy thriller than Corbijn and here with the added feature of the late, gifted Philip Seymour Hoffman as the lead in one of his final roles.

Movie Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Unless you're one of the multitude of Wes Anderson detractors—I lump these in with critics of directors like Tim Burton, the Coens and other filmmakers who mistake their unique, oddball aesthetics, clarity of vision, and consistency for laziness and a failure to evolve—then you probably subscribe to the idea that there are no bad Anderson films, just lesser ones. (This was sort of my answer to a recent poll inquiring about the best/worst Anderson films.) In fact, though I'm partial to The Royal Tenenbaums myself, The Grand Budapest Hotel might possibly be even better than that. It will take some time to fully grasp whether that's really the case or not. But it's really an argument of degrees, isn't it? This is to say that The Grand Budapest Hotel is a refinement of what Wes Anderson has always focused on in his films.

On Judas in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

by Tony Dayoub

The recent Criterion Blu-ray release of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ was occasion for me to revisit a film I hadn't seen since 1990. Back then, I was neither mature enough to comprehend the full weight of its ideas, nor was I well-versed enough in Biblical lore to truly appreciate why fundamentalists might consider the film radical. Nor was my knowledge of cinema as comprehensive as it is now to understand the movie's place among the lineage of Christ films which precede and follow it. In truth, I'm not sure that even a lifetime of exposure to any of these topics might provide any further insight into this mysterious film than I possess now. So rather than address the movie in the form of a typical review, I've decided to simply introduce some thoughts that struck me as I watched it, with the hope that any readers might want to discuss these (or their own thoughts) in the comments section below.

Movie Review: John Carter

by Tony Dayoub

No movie can withstand the scrutiny John Carter—a lavish and, no doubt, costly science fiction blockbuster—has been subject to. But as usually happens in movies of this order, some people start actively rooting against it (read this piece and its author's own comment, the third one down). Ask James Cameron, an innovator and showman who's faced such discouragement from fickle critics too many times to list (Avatar, Titanic and others). Curiously, someone like George Lucas gets a pass despite blatant attempts at cravenly bleeding his Star Wars franchise drier than a squeezed lemon for profits at the expense of its naive fans. Perhaps there's a little creative envy involved. Or in the case of some Hollywood reporters, maybe there's a bit of settling old scores against a studio, actor or filmmaker. All of this attendant anti-fanfare is to be expected when a leviathan like John Carter dares to flirt with greatness and disappointingly falls a little short. But the most frustrating aspect is the way many, even those who haven't seen the film itself, start racing behind the agenda-driven critics like a bunch of lemmings headed off a cliff. Especially when the movie they've decided to beat on is a beautifully lensed, well-acted, escapist fantasy as clever as John Carter.

Cronenberg Blogathon: eXistenZ (1999)

by Evan Waters

[Evan Waters looks at movies, books and comics at Club Parnassus.]

eXistenZ has a bit of a place in my heart. It was the first David Cronenberg film I saw theatrically, having more or less discovered the man's work on video the year before. That was in 1999, a strange and far-off land, and seeing it in the immediate aftermath of the Columbine shootings—with media violence and video games in particular targeted as influences—made it resonate strongly. A decade later, it holds up in very unusual ways; it's unconventional even for Cronenberg and is a bit awkward in terms of how it's built and put together, but the sheer audacious oddness of it pulls us through and animates it with a unique energy.

NYFF09 Movie Review: Antichrist

by Tony Dayoub



There have been movies that continue to intrude on my psyche weeks after first having seen them. Movies that despite my initial negative opinion so surprised me with their subtle way of insinuating themselves into my thoughts that I couldn't help but reassess them. But there's rarely anything subtle about Lars von Trier's Antichrist. The film is like a bully that bludgeons you into submission when it really doesn't need to. Lars von Trier is known for his desire to take risks. Sometimes they pay off, like in the wonderful theatrical staging of Dogville (2003). But Antichrist betrays its director's lack of confidence in his own proven ability to move you.