MetroPulse Stories: Movie Guide

Shane Carruth's Follows 'Primer' With the Perplexing But Rewarding 'Upstream Color'

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:11:00 -0000

That Upstream Color even exists represents both a triumph and a rebuke to the mainstream film-production system that couldn’t spring for a work this daring and, for all its polish, most likely inexpensive.

Baz Luhrmann’s 'Great Gatsby': All Spectacle, No Heart

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:48:00 -0000

Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby has quite a bit going for it: an epic soundtrack; eye-popping art direction; a titanic-sized (or Titanic-sized) budget, courtesy of co-producer Jay-Z; a number of radiant performances; and source material from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great American Novel. It also kinda sucks.

Studio Ghibli’s Torch Is Not Quite Passed Yet With 'From Up on Poppy Hill'

coury@metropulse.com (Coury Turczyn) — Wed, 08 May 2013 14:35:00 -0000

From Up on Poppy Hill is a fine film. But it’s not a great one.

'Repo Man'’s Class Anger Still Seethes Almost 30 Years Later

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:38:00 -0000

Without putting too much weight or importance behind what a bunch of now-elderly former youths once wanted to express, one of the key things that keeps the spirit of punk alive, or at least on life support, is class anger. And class anger is one of the key things that animates writer/director Alex Cox’s 1984 Repo Man.

Michael Bay Reveals Unexpected Self-Referential Wit in Action Satire 'Pain & Gain'

Wed, 01 May 2013 14:34:00 -0000

Some people have never been particularly friendly to the Transformers director; according to Rotten Tomatoes, his 1996 prison-break adventure The Rock is the only Bay film to inspire so much as toleration from critics, while serious film fans deride his rapid, nearly incomprehensible cutting as the depths of taste. But if we let fair criticisms and commercial savvy drown each other out, what remains of Michael Bay isn’t some empty-headed technician with a hard-on for explosions—it’s a filmmaker who’s conquered the biggest, dumbest beast in Hollywood, and now practices the blockbuster as a style unto itself.

'Oblivion' Reminds Us What Makes Sci-Fi Great

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:50:00 -0000

Oblivion is just as interesting for what it might mean for sci-fi fans as for what it actually is. It gives us everything we’d expect from a movie that comes with a reported $100 million price tag, but it’s also a throwback to the thoughtful science fiction of the 1960s and ’70s.

Film Critic and Documentarian Mark Cousins Explores a Very Personal 'Story of Film'

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:08:00 -0000

Most people who’ve been halfway paying attention know the story of film, or at least some version of it. Eadweard Muybridge, Thomas Edison, jerky silents, talkies, glossy Hollywood studios, the New Wave, the ’70s, Star Wars, indies, CGI, something like that. Whether gleaned from a college class or picked up along the way, it’s a serviceable outline, and one that thumbnails the rudiments of Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film (Music Box DVD and streaming) quite nicely. But in adapting his book of the same name, Cousins goes deeper, and, as one might expect for a video essay that spans 15 hour-long episodes, far, far wider.

Repeat Offender Rob Zombie Manages to Attain Stylishness with 'The Lords of Salem'

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:09:00 -0000
Shock-rocker Rob Zombie’s fifth feature, The Lords of Salem, is his most accomplished movie so far, and has something none of his previous films could claim: a sense of fun.