Results tagged “reelhub”

Superbad director Greg Mottola’s latest film, Adventureland, premieres today, sending the message that we all need a little more adventure in our lives. For recent Oberlin grad James Brennan, his summer 1987 adventures don't quite come in the form that he expected When he’s told by his parents that they can no longer pay for his summer trip to Europe, James’ summer plans move from the meaningful exploration of ancient ruins to the meaningless manning of game booths at Adventureland, an amusement park near his native Pittsburgh. Even the park hiring process is disappointing, as the owner relegates James to games duty rather than his preferred rides, and ignores his resume, chock-full of academic accomplishments and college extracurriculars.

Last night at the Brattle theater, the Boston Society of Film Critics gathered to hand-out their annual awards. It was the second time the organization held an actual ceremony, and the group wisely decided to use the opportunity to single out the people that make the Boston film world what it is, the curators, theater managers, authors, and projectionists whose unqualified love of film make going to the movies here a singular experience. We often think about film as a mass media, but for at least one night the intimacy of watching movies was on display.

Sex and Justice

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Daniel Burman's Empty Nest (El Nido Vacio) is a steadily somber film punctuated by moments of extreme joy and visual expressionism. Largely a domestic story, the movie follows Leonardo (Oscar Martinez), a successful playwright, as he navigates the breakdown of his personal life. His is the subtle breakdown of children moving away and ebbed romance rather than the sudden, dramatic breakdown of marriage, and, as such, it requires a different sort of language than the high theatricality of a Revolutionary Road. There's the need for a tenderness and emotional restraint, and Burman treats his characters with detached love even as he moves them into surreal places.

Tonight, the HFA winds down its look at the Unknown Orson Welles with two hours of rough footage from some of Welles' never completed projects. While footage from The Deep makes up the bulk of tonight's program, the HFA is also screening scenes from Welles' version of Don Quixote, the dream project that received a new vitality when Terry Gilliam tried and failed to film is own version of the story, brilliantly documented in the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha. There's no way of knowing what to expect from tonight's program, whether the footage justifies Welles' uncompromising vision, or whether it was all folly. But it's likely tonight may be the only chance you have to find out.

The excitement of documentary filmmaking is that you never know exactly where the story will take you. The makers of startup.com probably never set out to make a morality tale about the outsize egos of internet start-ups, or "the rise and fall of the American dream" as the tagline eventually proclaimed, nor does one imagine that the filmmakers of Holyland Hardball intended to make a movie about cultural separation and the rise and fall of American dreamers. But the end result is a thoroughly entertaining documentary movie about misplaced altruism, about the desire to do something for someone else, without ever stopping to think about whether or not the "good deed" is wanted at all.

Tonight marks the first official night of the 20th Boston Jewish Film Festival. Since it began, the BJFF has grown to be one of the premier festivals in the region, regularly screening challenging films like The Pianist and Au Revoir, Les Enfants. Part of the festival's rise is undoubtedly tied to the sudden, rapid growth of Israeli Cinema. While Israeli movies may lack the "it" status (itness?) of Romanian films, Israeli Cinema has quietly become one of the world's finest, providing the curators with a reliable stream of exceptional films. In recent years, the BJFF has screened the Academy Award nominated Beaufort, the Camera D'Or winning Jellyfish, and the brilliant Nina's Tragedies.

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Burn After Reading is the Coen brother's latest comedic re-imagining of genre conventions, sliding in next to The Hudsucker Proxy (Horatio Alger Stories), and The Big Lebowski (film noir). But despite Reading's frequent attempts to channel Lebowski's spirit, the movie is largely devoid of the madcap energy that makes Lebowski so irresistible, and often devoid of any energy whatsoever. For all its humor (and there will be humor), the movie is a mostly glum affair with serious actors doing serious things quite seriously.

Starting Friday, the Brattle Theater showcases Alfred Hitchcock's 1950s, the commercial and critical high-point of his long and prolific career. The series rightly starts with Vertigo, the film now considered by many to be Hitchcock's masterpiece, and the 8th greatest American movie according to the AFI. In many ways it's hard to evaluate a movie like Vertigo. The film is so famous, so popular, so manifestly considered great that there's almost nothing to say about its merits anymore. Vertigo simply is for us to appreciate.

With the Brattle Theater about to begin a limited engagement of Sergio Leone's restored epic Once Upon a Time in the West on Friday, and the Harvard Film Archive set to hold a retrospective on that other great Western re-imaginist (soon-to-be a Bostonist sister site!), Sam Peckinpah, it seemed only right to hold our own miniature Leone retrospective by taking a look back at the movie that started his short but highly influential career.

Reel Hub, All That Heaven Allows, Douglas Sirk, Brattle Theater, Rock Hudson, Jane Wyman, Sentimentality

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Robots and Angelina Jolie kind of go together, in a creepy way. Good thing this weekend is dedicated exclusively to them! Disney/Pixar is coming out with Wall-E, which appears to be a robotic version of E.T., except sort of in reverse, and with a weirder name. Why Wall-E? It's so overly reminiscent of both fish and lazy eyes. Turns out WALL-E is an aconym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class, which is also a terrible name. C'mon, Disney, you gave us Jasmine and Ariel--and even Gaston and Simba for the boys. You can do better!

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Memorial Day weekend requires two things: barbecues and blockbusters. (And sunshine. Fortunately, it looks like the weather will comply on that front.) Hollywood is helping us out here; this weekend, we have the new Indiana Jones, Speed Racer, Iron Man, and Prince Caspian to choose from in the theatres. If you can't make up your mind, why not hide from reality for an entire day and see 'em all back to back?

It's funny that Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz's new film is called What Happens in Vegas. It implies the usual counterpart to that line, "...stays in Vegas," but sadly the film doesn't take its own advice. This movie should have stayed in the film reel, or in the writer's head, or in Ashton Kutcher's pants, or any other place it didn't have the opportunity to enter the collective American consciousness. If there's anything we don't need, it's another film about a Britney-esque marriage and the stupid decisions that come before and after it. This thing has gotta be dumber than K-Fed after a few cold ones, not to mention derivative of more crappy "love" story films than we can count.

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Boston just had its first 70-degree day, and with the warmth of spring comes the magic of prom. In this case, however, prom isn't so much magical as murderous. Gasp! Opening this evening is Prom Night, a probably-not-so-Hitchcockian thriller we expect will be centered on lots of shots of a scantily clad, excessively frightened Brittany Murphy Spears Snow (it had to be one of those). The real horror of this genre is its tendency to drift toward the formulaic. More promising (if barely) is Street Kings, a cop thriller genre film that at least has Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie (swoon!), and Jay Mohr--all of whom we like individually, though we're not sure the Street Kings script will give them anything to work with. Critic Bill Clark "was halfway expecting Leslie Nielsen to make a cameo appearance as the coroner," and David Nusair concurs: "Street Kings ultimately comes off as an irresistible throwback to the unapologetically over-the-top actioners of the 1980s." Did we mention Keanu Reeves plays the main character? Talk about irresistible!

21, the blackjack movie based on the real-life exploits of card-counting MIT students, was No. 1 at the box office this week. We're happy for it in that the movie makes geekiness sexy and thrilling, even if it did jumble up a few Boston landmarks.

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Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who remained on top of the box office, followed by another behemoth almost as big as family-friendly monster hits--Tyler Perry. In case you haven't heard of Tyler Perry, he was the force behind Diary of a Mad Black Woman, and Perry is fond of dressing in drag as "Madea," a take-no-prisoners old lady. Perry's latest effort, Meet the Browns, with Angela Bassett and Rick Fox (yeah, the Lakers Rick Fox--go figure) landed at number two at the box office.

Ah, Drillbit Taylor. It sounds like the name of a strapping young man, ready to take on America with just the shirt on his back, the heart in his chest, and the drillbit in his hand.... ahh, who are we kidding? It sounds like the name of a crappy movie that's nothing more than an excuse for Owen Wilson to get paid millions of dollars thanks to millions of Americans inexplicably willing to waste their money on his crooked-nosed face. Let's just hope people pay cash for this film and don't use it to further contribute to any misunderstood credit crisis that may exist.

, the Dr. Seuss tale with voices from Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell, was number-one at the box office. And it was number-one in a big way with $45.1 million bucks.

came in second.

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The big movie news this week was the rock-bottom ratings for the Oscar telecast. People just didn't tune in. Maybe it was the fact that the big movies weren't money-makers, but do the masses really expect the Academy to nominate Spider-Man 3 for an Oscar? No. However, nominating Ratatouille for best picture instead of limiting it to the animated section might have at least piqued the interest of moviegoers.