PREMIUM RUSH Movie Review

Posted by Eric Ambler - 09/26/2012 - Movie Review, Movies

It’s hard to watch a film set in a post-Giuliani New York City and not wonder whether it would even be recognizable to certain denizens of its famed cinematic past. The greedy, seedy city of Ratso Rizzo, Popeye Doyle, and Travis Bickle has transformed over the years into a place suitable for tourists, gentrifying families, and Garry Marshall rom-coms.

DREDD Movie Review

Posted by Eric Ambler - 09/23/2012 - Movie Review, Movies

Karl Urban’s chin should receive top billing in Dredd, a sci-fi action film that’s as intractable as its leading man’s jawline. It’s the second attempt (after the 1995 Sylvester Stallone vehicle Judge Dredd) at packaging the wry, darkly ironic British comic book hero Judge Dredd as a hulking, humorless lawman of a dystopian future where [...]

THE MASTER Movie Review

Posted by Eric Ambler - 09/20/2012 - Movie Review, Movies

the-master-joaquin-phoenix-philip-seymour-hoffman

Back when little was known about The Master, the latest film from Paul Thomas Anderson, it made sense to assume that the movie’s rumored subject matter about a Scientology-like religious organization would be an ideal backdrop for many of the director’s favorite themes – unorthodox familial bonds, self-destructive obsessions, and solidarity among society’s outcasts. Instead, [...]

Interview: STEVE Writer-Director Rupert Friend

Posted by Eric Ambler - 09/19/2012 - Interviews, Movies

STEVE-short-film-Rupert-Friend-Keira-Knightley-Tom-Mison

Professionally-trained British actor Rupert Friend is probably best known to audiences for his roles in the period dramas Pride and Prejudice and The Young Victoria, but in recent years he’s also honed his skills as a writer, director, and producer of short films with his production company, Beat Pictures. His latest short, Steve, assembles an impressive [...]

Windswept WUTHERING HEIGHTS Teaser Howls With Emotion

Posted by Eric Ambler - 09/09/2012 - Movies, Trailers

Oscilloscope Laboratories great new trailer for Andrea Arnold’s striking adaption of Emily Brontë’s classic novel, WUTHERING HEIGHTS. The film will open in New York on Oct. 5, LA on Oct. 12, with a national roll out to follow.

THE INBETWEENERS Movie Review

Posted by Eric Ambler - 09/06/2012 - Movie Review, Movies

When it comes to actual sex in a teen sex comedy, words speak louder than actions. That much is definitely true in the rude, ribald British comedy The Inbetweeners, a film that exhausts all its synonyms for human genitalia within the first 15 minutes. (Our transatlantic cousins are second-to-none in creating euphemisms for “vagina.”) Look [...]

THE COMEDY Teaser: Tim and Eric Get Dramatic

Posted by Eric Ambler - 09/01/2012 - Movies, Trailers

Via /Film, we have the debuting teaser trailer for Rick Alverson’s The Comedy, a disconcerting portrait of white male privilege that reportedly challenged the Sundance walkout record when it bowed at the festival earlier this year. The teaser doesn’t try to hide its reputation – the first featured quote is from a perplexed Huffington Post [...]

KUMARÉ Movie Review

Posted by Eric Ambler - 09/01/2012 - Movie Review, Movies

Human spirituality is a tricky topic, one that most movies – even nonfiction ones – have difficulty addressing without some measure of smirking irony or pronounced disillusionment before acknowledging that, hey, maybe we can learn something after all. In the documentary Kumaré, filmmaker Vikram Gandhi doesn’t just adhere to this formula – he embraces it [...]

COMPLIANCE Movie Review

Posted by Eric Ambler - 08/23/2012 - Movie Review, Movies

In the early 1960s, the infamous Milgram experiment tested the limits of obedience by having individuals administer (fake) electric shocks to an actor posing as a fellow test subject. The scientist in charge assured them that the punishments were crucial to the experiment’s success, and chided people who expressed reservations, even as the other test subject pretended to be in immense pain.