"When Milo loses his job, then gets a chance to have it back if he can
reel in a big fish — a major gift from an old college friend who’s now a
Machiavellian tech millionaire — he starts down a grim and spiraling
path. Manipulated and degraded by the millionaire, Purdy; frozen out by
his quite friendly yet unapologetically adulterous wife, Maura; even
disrespected by his penis-obsessed preschooler, Milo thrashes around
trying to stay afloat while he luxuriates in his growing despair and
resentment. To make matters worse, Purdy has an illegitimate son, Don — a
viciously angry Iraq war amputee — who turns out to be Milo’s homework:
to get the donation, Milo has to keep tabs on Don and funnel hush money
his way." (NY Times)
"She pulled out the piece of hotel stationery “that’s gonna make me look crazy.” She hesitated and said she couldn’t understand why she was so nervous. I interrupted to say I was nervous too. For the first time, she looked at me. Her eyes were huge and green, like mint chocolate chip when it melts. “That’s very” — she laughed — “mirror neuronal of you.” I asked what mirror neurons were. She said they’re what “make you feel empathy.” Here, she began reading rapidly, furiously, from the small piece of paper:" (NY Mag)
"The only good thing about Yoko Ono was 'Oh Yoko!'"
"Aw, man. I'm a, I'm a Yoko Ono fan."
"Aww, man? Really? I'd always get bummed out when I saw her eat at Honmura An, and she'd eat soba there and I'd be like, 'Fucking...that's fucking Yoko Ono.'"
"Well, I’m a pillhead, and I had some medication run out, and I couldn’t
sleep. That was Thursday, and I’m supposed to write four times a week,
and I’d already done that. Most of the time I couldn’t even make that,
but I did then, so I didn’t go in on Friday. Then I used drugs heavily
that weekend, which was my choice, whatever, I party. And I had
forgotten my phone at the office by mistake, but I didn’t even care. And
then the Internet got turned off in my apartment, and because I didn’t
even have a phone I couldn’t turn the Internet on, and I had no way of
getting ahold of anyone. And then I got sort of depressed, as pillheads
are wont to do. And put up my blackout curtains and just went to bed for
a week. I didn’t call them [my co-workers at xoJane.com], didn’t tweet,
didn’t do anything." - NY Mag
"This is an evocation of young love in a more innocent America: a
charming, beautifully wrought, if somehow depthless film; heartfelt and
thought through to the tiniest, quirkiest detail in classic Anderson
style. There are the familiar rectilinear shots and compositions with
letters and drawings suddenly filling the screen like courtroom
exhibits." (The Guardian)
"Oftentimes, I write about people who are smarter than I am and know more
than I do, and I am able to do that simply by being tutored almost
phonetically, sometimes. I’m used to it. I grew up surrounded by people
who are smarter than I am, and I like the sound of intelligence. I can
imitate that sound, but it’s not organic. It’s not intelligence. It’s my
phonetic ability to imitate the sound of intelligence." - NY Mag
"I am dismayed. I have no prejudice against violence when I find it in a well-made film. But this film is almost brutally cynical in its approach. The Welsh director, Gareth Evans, knows there's a fanboy audience for his formula, in which special effects amp up the mayhem in senseless carnage.
There's obviously an audience for the film, probably a large one. They are content, even eager, to sit in a theater and watch one action figure after another pound and blast one another to death. They require no dialogue, no plot, no characters, no humanity. Have you noticed how cats and dogs will look at a TV screen on which there are things jumping around? It is to that level of the brain's reptilian complex that the film appeals." (Roger Ebert)
"Kiss Me, Stupid is not likely to corrupt any sensible audience. But there is a cheapness and more than a fair share of crudeness about the humor of a contrived double adultery situation that a husband-wife combo stumble into." (Variety)
"By now everybody knows that Ryan O'Neal and his real-life daughter, Tatum, play the man and the girl. But I wonder how many moviegoers will be prepared for the astonishing confidence and depth that Tatum brings to what's really the starring role. I'd heard about how good she was supposed to be, but I nevertheless expected a kind of clever cuteness, like we got from Shirley Temple or young Elizabeth Taylor. Not at all. Tatum O'Neal creates a character out of thin air, makes us watch her every moment and literally makes the movie work (in the sense that this key role had to be well played)."(Roger Ebert)
"'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang' is made for a fairly specific audience; it helps if you are familiar with the private eye genre in general and the works of Raymond Chandler in particular (the movie has five chapter headings, all taken from Chandler's titles). But do the titles come from Harry Lockhart, or do they exist outside his mind and suggest that Shane Black's screenplay has another level of comment on top? That would be roughly like the subtitles in 'Domino,' which have a different point of view than the narration." (Roger Ebert)
"The Coens are at their clever best with this snowbound film noir, a crazily mundane crime story set in their native Midwest. Purportedly based on real events, it brings them as close as they may ever come -- not very -- to everyday life and ordinary people. Perversely, the frozen north even brings out some uncharacteristic warmth in these coolly cerebral film makers, although anyone seeking the milk of human kindness would be well advised to look elsewhere. The Coens' outlook remains as jaundiced as it was in 'Blood Simple,' the razor-sharp 1984 debut feature that the much more stylish and entertaining 'Fargo' brings to mind." (NY Times)
"Lars von Trier's Dogville gives us America on a soundstage and a Rocky Mountain township rendered in chalk marks on the floor. It is Von Trier's America and Von Trier's township, and this enraged some viewers who dismissed the film as a crude, blinkered diatribe from a man too timid (on account of his aversion to air travel) to actually visit the country for himself. And yes, Dogville is crude and arguably blinkered as well. But it is also electrifying, gripping and audacious: the work of a director at the peak of his powers." (The Guardian)
"The time is the late 1950's, the place the Paradise, a failing Italian restaurant in New York run by two irresistible brothers. Both are fiercely proud, and their culinary relationship is so close that each has opinions about how the other minces garlic or wields a salt shaker. Secondo (Mr. Tucci) is the front man, debonair and impeccable, humoring the few boorish customers that the restaurant is able to lure. As his name suggests, Primo (Tony Shalhoub) is the artist, hiding himself in the kitchen and muttering about crimes like 'the rape of cuisine.'"(NY Times)
"In its mixture of the quirky and the downbeat, 'Ceremony' aspires to be a hybrid of Noah Baumbach’s 'Margot at the Wedding' and Wes Anderson’s 'Rushmore' but falls far short. For one thing, the Zoe-Sam connection is preposterous on any level. The movie hints that Zoe has an impulsive wild streak, but because it devotes more time to her insufferable stalker, her character remains only a sketch." (NY Times)
"I am reminded of a film you should see some day, Melville's 'Le Samourai,' about a man who lies on a bed in a dark hotel room and smokes, and gets up, and pays meticulous attention to his appearance, and goes out into the night, and we have no idea who this man is. I find this more interesting than a movie about a man whose nature and objectives are made clear in the first five minutes, in a plot that simply points him straight ahead." (Roger Ebert)
"The build-up to this slaying forms the opening scene to Jean-François Richet's terrific film, though the sequence is presented in a tricksy split-screen manner, misleadingly hinting that the film will be in the wacky Anglo-Saxon style of The Italian Job or The Thomas Crown Affair. Instead, Mesrine is in the tradition of Jules Dassin's Rififi or Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge: muscular, forthright storytelling, hard-smoking, hard-drinking action, horribly incorrect attitudes, brutality with a top-note of self-loathing, bushy moustaches and a cracking lead performance from Vincent Cassel as Mesrine." (The Guardian)
"The images Mr. Haneke puts on screen (they are shot with crisp, glossy-magazine elegance by Darius Khondji) are shocking, but they don’t unfold with the usual slasher-movie jolts of grisliness. The camera frequently stands still as the horror unfolds just beyond its range, and when a bloody event takes place, we are likely to be shown the face of a passive witness rather than that of the perpetrator or the victim." (NY Times)
