Film Review: “Backbeat” — Iain Softley (1994)

Rating: 5 / 10 Long before Ringo Starr was a Fab Four fixture, or before Love Me Do became their first hit single… before John Lennon proclaimed that the band was more popular than Jesus, or before they were slumming around India with the Maharishi… before their Magical Mystery Tour debacle of a film and…

Film Review: “Il Posto” — Ermanno Olmi (1961)

Rating: 9 / 10 Life’s most agonizing transition arguably occurs when the fragile boundary between childhood and adulthood blurs and rather quickly vanishes; that emotionally quizzical overlap during which the insecurities and uncertainties of youth immediately and awkwardly merge with the responsibilities and gray-scale cynicism of adulthood. It’s a heady mix of fear and excitement…

Film Review: “Knife In The Water” — Roman Polanski (1962)

Rating: 9 / 10 Filmed in black-and-white, set almost entirely on a small sailboat, and with a cast of only three characters, there’s something warm and analog about Roman Polanski’s debut film Nóż W Wodzie (Knife In The Water) . Like slipping a needle on a vinyl groove, the film cracks and pops and skips…

Film Review: “Slacker” — Richard Linklater (1991)

Rating: 8 / 10 Slacker, Richard Linklater’s landmark 1991 independent film, is ostensibly a celebration of Austin’s self-proclaimed “slacker” culture, a loose-knit hodge-podge of eccentrics, oddballs, loners, artists, intellectuals, anarchists, pseudo-intellectuals, conspiracy theorists, superfreaks, what-have-you. The film presents no driving narrative, no real plot to speak of, and nary a whisper of a storyline. Linklater’s…

Film Review: “Bronson” — Nicolas Winding Refn (2008)

Rating: 8 / 10 There is a meticulous degree of staged composition in Nicolas Winding Refn’s utterly compelling Bronson, one which runs almost counter-intuitive to the narrative’s freewheeling nihilistic bent. This story of Britain’s most infamous prisoner, played with ridiculously brutish theatricality in a masterful performance by Tom Hardy, doesn’t really tell us a thing about…