Cinema, Literature, Theater, Music, Art.

It's a genre. The literary film. Note the title's font, a clear reference to Philip Roth. It's a genre. You've seen the type before. The literary film. Stories about writers, their books, their lives, loves, egos, successes, and failures. Put a young, ambitious, self-absorbed writer in New York City, make him Jewish, give him a mentor and a string of girlfriends past and present, and call him Philip. Now add a title font that strongly resembles the fonts used on the covers of Philip Roth's books and you've got Alex Ross Perry's  Listen Up Philip.  Using two key techniques - a narrator's voice over (performed by Eric Bogosian) and long, dialogue-driven scenes filmed hand held in close ups - Perry's film is, like Jason Shwartzman's character, Philip Lewis Friedman, both attractive and repelling.  Listen Up Philip  attempts - and to some degree - succeeds in keeping us interested in the life of a lousy, heartless, but talented egoist.  Phil...

Locke's poster suggests speed. In fact, the BMW Locke drives down Britain's M6 motorway never goes above 60 mph. The movements here are all inside Locke's mind. Wonderful. Watching Locke you get the feeling the film was written and directed by a twenty five year old upstart. A kid , really, more interested in innovation than emotion. I looked up the writer/director. He is 56 year old Steven Knight, a Brit, and with a string of screenwriting credits behind him. So...that was my first misconception. The second one actually took place before I saw the film. I had read that the entire film took place inside a moving car, the camera trained on Mr. Hardy, and that was pretty much it. How, I wondered, could this possibly be anything more than an interesting, meandering, but ultimately failed experiment? As I say, that was my second misconception. The landscape of Tom Hardy's face in Locke registers a gamut of feelings. It's as much of a canvas as the surrounding l...

Criterion's poster for the re-relase of Ray's Apu Trilogy. If you go, see them in the order they were made, preferably in one day. Sure, it's a marathon, but worth every minute. For Boston folks, the Kendall Square Cinema has scheduled them to play back to back, with a 45 minute break between parts 2 and 3, just enough time for a sandwich and a beer at The Friendly Toast! “Never having seen a Satyajit Ray film is like never having seen the sun or the moon.”  —AKIRA KUROSAWA Criterion's restored 4K theatrical re-release of Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy ranks among the top cinematic events of the year. The films are deeply human and tell a timeless, universal story in the simplest of ways. The degree of authenticity here might lead one to believe they're watching a type of ethnographic or anthropological documentary when, in fact, we are talking about a filmmaking style closer to the Italian neo-realists (I'm thinking specifically of DeSica's B...

Indominus Rex gets inside Jurassic World's aviary. Mouahahaah! I never thought I'd find myself telling you to see the biggest blockbuster on the planet in the summer of 2015, but - ironically - here I am telling you as much. More importantly, here is Steven Spielberg, guns a blazin'. By now the whiz kid's playbook has been co-opted, imitated, stolen, copied, and mimicked by just about everyone, but nothing beats the original. Working as executive producer, Spielberg's touch is evident throughout Jurassic World's " Wonder-kid-I'm-having-so-much-fun-Holy-crap-watch-out-for-that monster! " ride. That it's directed by someone else (whose name escapes me and I'm too lazy to look it up) is kind of secondary. This is a Steven Spielberg summer fantasia. Let's look at the evidence.  Old school Amblin' Entertainment logo indicating this is a project very close to Spielberg's heart? Check. The hero as lion tamer. Creepy opening...