Film: The Measure, The L Magazine

Brooklyn's Best Young Filmmakers

Henry Stewart — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Now in its fifth year, BAMcinemaFest (June 19-28) may not have the cultural cachet of the New York or Tribeca film festivals, but it's quickly becoming a local favorite for those in-the-know. Two years ago, the New Yorker's Richard Brody called it "the city’s best independent-film showcase."…

This is the End. But Is it Funny?

Jesse Hassenger — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:05:00 -0400

This is the End: This apocalypse comedy from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg represents an apex for what started unexpectedly with Judd Apatow and Paul Feig's Freaks and Geeks. For years, the profane-yet-sweet, improvisation-heavy comic stylings of Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jason Segel and others were shepherded by distinctive directors like Apatow and David Gordon Green or more experienced occasional sponsors and benefactors like Will Ferrell and Ben Stiller.…

The Best Old Movies On a Big Screen This Week

Aaron Cutler — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:30:00 -0400

Day of the Locust (1975)
Directed by John Schlesinger
This over-babied white elephant, adapted by Waldo Salt, misinterprets the sardonicism and empathy of the Nathanael West source novel—the classic excoriation of late-30s Hollywood. But its tortured ambition leads to alternative delights, particularly the location scouting and the photography by Conrad Hall, whose relishing of the milieu is tangible.…

Could The Internship Actually Be Funny?

Jesse Hassenger — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:16:00 -0400

The Internship: Vince Vaughn, like his colleague in the slide to CBS-sitcom laziness Adam Sandler, loves the 80s—that much seems clear from the slobs-versus-snobs aesthetic of movies like Dodgeball and the monologue he rattles off about Flashdance in the trailer for The Internship. So I guess it's appropriate that while The Internship appears, if anything, too far into the future—eight years removed from the Vaughn/Wilson team-up Wedding Crashers—its trailer feels like it's gone backward, like it's the 80s-style slobs-versus-snobs version of that previous hit.…

The Best Old Movies On a Big Screen This Week

Aaron Cutler — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Late Spring (1949)
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu
This home drama (shomin-geki) about a widower and his adult daughter, who’s too attached to their quiet life together to want to marry, is lauded as the director’s most perfect work—which is like saying it’s God the Son, or an avatar of Vishnu. Accordingly, critics battle over the movie’s stance on marriage: a social good or an unnecessary evil?…

The Six Dumbest Criticisms of After Earth

Jesse Hassenger — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 09:15:00 -0400

Will Smith, Jaden Smith, and M. Night Shyamalan: it's a combination too good to be true! Well, four or five years ago that might have characterized the box office potential of After Earth; in 2013, though, the movie's true potential is for just how many nasty and/or hyperbolic digs movie critics can cram into a single review.…

What's Up With M. Night Shyamalan?

Jesse Hassenger — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:54:00 -0400

After Earth: Buzz around After Earth is quiet—a little, as the cliché goes, too quiet. The hush can probably be attributed to M. Night Shyamalan, the secret director and cowriter of this Will n' Jaden Smith sci-fi story, both because Shyamalan's films tend to unfold in an eerie hush, and because Sony seems to be hiding the filmmaker's presence following a downward spiral that would make Rob Reiner blush.…

Are All Slasher Movies About Rape?

Henry Stewart — Wed, 29 May 2013 09:30:00 -0400

As weapons go, knives are the most sexually charged. There's a reason Don Jose stabs Carmen outside of the bullfight rather than shoots or strangles her: the murder is a manifestation of his sexual jealousy.…

The Best Old Movies On a Big Screen This Week

Aaron Cutler — Wed, 29 May 2013 09:00:00 -0400

The Deadman (1990)
Directed by Peggy Ahwesh and Keith Sanborn
"I translated the Bataille text, which I had found in a bookstore in Paris,” codirector Sanborn tells us by email about his movie, one of the most important American avant-garde films of the past 30 years. “It's roughly the story of a woman cut loose from her normal world by the death of her lover.…

Unlikelier Franchise: The Fast and the Furious or Before Sunrise?

Jesse Hassenger — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:05:00 -0400

Fast & Furious 6: First all, the actual in-movie title is just Furious 6, which is nonsensical in that it makes it sound like Vin Diesel is leading a six-person team (he isn't) or that the movie might be play on The Magnificent Seven (hell no). But it's also perfect in that it follows series highlight Fast Five, and Furious 6 is very much a sequel to that sensibility rather than the mostly tedious cops-and-drug-dealers bullshit of the first four movies.…

How Did The Hangover Series Become So Successful?

Jesse Hassenger — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:55:00 -0400

Even if The Hangover Part III bombs out this weekend—and that seems unlikely—the Hangover trilogy will finish its run as easily one of the most successful comedy franchises of all time, even more so after you eliminate effects or action-based movies like Back to the Future or Beverly Hills Cop. This in turn makes Todd Phillips, the director and cowriter of the three movies, along with several other hits like Road Trip, Old School, and Due Date, one of our most successful comic filmmakers.…

Frances Ha, Friendship, Wankers, and the Oboe: Talking with Greta Gerwig and Mickey Sumner

Kristin Iversen — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:28:00 -0400

In Noah Baumbach's latest film "Frances Ha," Greta Gerwig (who co-wrote "Frances" with Baumbach) and Mickey Sumner play Frances and Sophie—the closest of close friends. It's the kind of friendship where they fall asleep watching movies in bed together, have the same fantasies of being invited to universities to receive honorary degrees, play-fight in the middle of the street with a loose and intimate physicality, and even pick up each other's phone calls without letting it go to voicemail.…

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The Best Old Movies On a Big Screen This Week

Aaron Cutler — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Elmer Gantry (1960)
Directed by Richard Brooks
“Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk.” From these words, shown on a book page onscreen, the revivalist preacher played by Burt Lancaster bursts to life.…
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Dispatch from Cannes: The Movies that Left Audiences Confused

Jon Robbins — Wed, 22 May 2013 08:55:00 -0400

A Touch of Sin
Jia Zhangke channels Chan-wook Park in this film, which left some at Cannes confused. Combining elements of the South Korean revenge genre and American western with his more typical focus on the effects of urbanization and globalization on everyday Chinese citizens, it lasts an insistent two hours and 15 minutes, during which a respectable number of characters are killed and/or thoroughly humiliated.…
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Should You See the Star Trek Sequel?

Jesse Hassenger — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:01:00 -0400

Star Trek Into Darkness: Much of the thrill of the J.J. Abrams refresh of Star Trek in 2009 came from his non-fan willingness to mix in outside influences: the multicolored creatures and hurtling pace of Star Wars, the lens-flared post-Bay visual sheen, and the snappiness of funny/serious TV ensembles like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It wasn't quite as cerebral as the Trek of the past, but you could forgive the filmmakers their excitement at getting to play with factory-fresh models of Kirk, Spock, Bones, and all the rest—and doing so with a bit more bounce and swagger than the previous, older cast configurations would allow.…
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The Best Old Movies On a Big Screen This Week

Aaron Cutler — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:30:00 -0400

Family Plot (1976)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock was a great comic filmmaker who understood that humor lay in peoples’ failed efforts to keep a chaotic world in order. His best comic actors understood this, too: Carole Lombard fighting for her husband’s attentions in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), Shirley MacLaine wriggling in and out of love’s grasp in The Trouble with Harry (1955), and Karen Black walking with trepidation through Hitchcock’s last film, this screwball thriller.…
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A Defense of the Gatsby Movie By Someone Who Loves the Book

Jesse Hassenger — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:13:00 -0400

The last time Baz Luhrmann volunteered for the task of adapting classic literature, he dressed up Shakespearean language in 90s-fantasia fashion and gunplay, not to mention music-video electricity, in a distinctive take on Romeo and Juliet—perhaps the most memorable of that decade's many Bard rejiggerings (but please don't tell Kenneth Branagh; it seems impolite). The movies that followed—the musical Moulin Rouge and the epic Australia—were not based on anything more than the thinnest slivers of history, but they both feel inspired by archetypal if unnamed classics, particularly Moulin Rouge, the best movie musical of the past, well, at least two or three decades, maybe more depending on your reverence.…
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The Great Gatsby: How Bad Could It Be?

Jesse Hassenger — Fri, 10 May 2013 11:19:00 -0400

The Great Gatsby: Despite its Great American Novel status, not to mention its author's own Hollywood connections, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby doesn't have the most fruitful record of film adaptations. That's not to say people haven't tried; this article over at PopMatters has an interesting rundown of the four straight-ish adaptations of the book: a 1926 silent version released not long after the book itself, lost to the ages; a 1949 version starring Alan Ladd as Gatsby that apparently makes the character into a more explicit criminal, with henchmen and everything, that is available most prominently on YouTube; the high-profile and crushing bore 1974 version; and the barely-considered 2000 made-for-TV version with Paul Rudd as Nick and Mira Sorvino as Daisy.…
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The 5 Must-See Movies at BAMcinemaFest

Henry Stewart — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:29:00 -0400

BAM's annual film festival returns for its fifth year with a kick-ass slate of films. Featuring lots of high-profile indies that have been making waves at other festivals, it also "remains a hometown festival," the press release reads, "with nearly half our main slate by Brooklyn filmmakers."…
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The Best Old Movies On a Big Screen This Week

Aaron Cutler — Wed, 08 May 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Badlands (1973)
Directed by Terrence Malick
Malick’s first film is also his most accessible; written while he was still studying at the American Film Institute, it features Malick’s most polished and easy-to-follow narrative. It follows a young outlaw couple as they embark on a haphazard killing spree across the American heartland in the 50s.…
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If Iron Man 3 "Only" Makes $300 Million This Weekend, Will Hollywood Be Disappointed?

Jesse Hassenger — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:31:00 -0400

Iron Man 3: Everyone knows that Iron Man 3 is going to make a ton of money this weekend; the question is just how much it's going to make. At this point, a gross in the area of the $300 million or so each of the first two movies grossed would feel, ridiculously enough, like a disappointment following The Avengers and Iron Man 3's enormous foreign rollout over the past week.…
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The Best Old Movies On a Big Screen This Week

Aaron Cutler — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Memories Look at Me (2012)
Directed by Song Fang
In Song´s debut feature, the winner of last year’s Best First Feature prize at the Locarno International Film Festival and a Main Slate selection at the most recent New York Film Festival, the Chinese writer-director-star travels from Beijing to her childhood home in Nanking to visit her family. Tender apartment-bound scenes ensue in which the young woman and her real-life parents recall the past, sometimes fondly, sometimes bittersweetly; documentary and fiction mix as they catch up on lost time.…
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Tribeca 2013: Broken Circle Breakdown Was Amazing!

Josh Stillman — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:16:00 -0400

Ok, ok, the Tribeca Film Festival is so last weekend, we know, but this movie was so great we just had to tell you!

If religion is merely a palliative, are those who choose to believe in it fools? Or are they just desperate for solace from life's cruel vicissitudes?…
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Tribeca 2013: In Defense of Neil LaBute

Ryan Vlastelica — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:20:00 -0400

Despite the controversy Neil LaBute invites, he seems, at heart, to be a sincere moralist. His works are often pegged as misogynistic or racially insensitive, but actually they're about misogyny and racial insensitivity; superficial views obscure how little he thinks of vitriolic characters, charismatic and confident though they may be.…
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What Should You Catch at Tribeca This Weekend? Part II

Jesse Hassenger — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:59:00 -0400

The English Teacher
Directed by Craig Zisk

It’s worth remembering that gifted artists come from somewhere, that the first 18 years of their lives follow a familiar cycle of school years. In The English Teacher, a prodigiously talented playwright returns to his hometown and reconnects with his former teacher, who becomes determined to stage a school production of his latest—and incredibly violent—work while flirting with the idea of having an affair with him.…
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