By now, we’re all a bit jaded when it comes to the end of the world. Perhaps Al Gore’s inconvenient truths killed our fun, so when Roland Emmerich’s 2012 reared its destructive head in preview trailers, it was initially hard to get up for the end of days again… [»Read]
In The Damned United, Michael Sheen portrays his third major historical Brit figure, after playing Prime Minister Tony Blair in The Queen in 2006 and David Frost in 2008’s Frost/Nixon. This time around, he’s Brian Clough, a British “football”… [»Read]
Films by the Coen brothers usually fall under three genres, unless you make a fourth slot for “ill-conceived”–looking at you, The Ladykillers! But otherwise, there’s the grim crime thriller (No Country for Old Men, Blood Simple) and the wacky… [»Read]
The Honolulu Academy of Arts offers up “six cinematic views of Japan” over the next two months, many favoring that country’s youth in its various states of turmoil and aspiration. For the Japanophile, this six-parter is a treasure, but casual moviegoers might need… [»Read]
The inherent thing wrong with The Men Who Stare at Goats is the tag that opens the film. “More of this is true than you would believe.” The source from which it was adapted, the book with the same name by London’s Guardian columnist Jon Ronson, opens… [»Read]
Don’t let American, French or German film-buffs know that the Weekly has outed a movie truth: the first story-line movie was devised by Italians, which makes the scrappy little Italian movie-scene the most durable on Earth, withstanding WWII bombings, dictators… [»Read]
Robert Zemeckis’s first foray into motion capture CGI didn’t go too well with The Polar Express. The humans looked lifeless and their eyes were dead; as Simon Cowell would describe it, they were like fish on a slab. His next feature, Beowulf, was a marked… [»Read]
Creating a biopic on one of the fashion world’s biggest icons can prove troublesome, because even those who might not know who Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was still have an inkling of what she accomplished. When she states that she will become rich from her designs, it’s… [»Read]
Fan of Ong Bak can bear one sigh of release: The sequel has once again features Tony Jaa and his incredible martial arts and acrobatics. As for the rest, the only thing Ong Bak 2 shares with its predecessor is its name. Jaa, who co-directs this installment… [»Read]
WIDE RELEASES Nine (Dec. 25) A singing, dancing Daniel Day-Lewis returns to the screen in this $50 million musical drama based on the Broadway show, which, in turn, was based on Federico Fellini’s film 8 1/2 (l963). It’s all about the meltdown… [»Read]
Like The Blair Witch Project before it, Paranormal Activity is the latest low-budget home-camcorder horror flick to arrive amidst gigabytes of Internet hype. While the scares are a smidgen obvious, the experience is still fun as theater audiences collectively… [»Read]
Director Spike Jonze has always been one of our most creatively playful contemporary filmmakers (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation). Coupled with co-screenwriter and literary wunderkind Dave Eggers, he created a version of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book… [»Read]
With a title like The Boys Are Back and a plot summary not unlike Mr. Mom, the most surprising thing about director Scott Hicks’ newest film is how it manages to avoid sitcom-stylized antics and treacly moralizing. The subject matter is shamelessly made for… [»Read]
The folks at the Hawaii Independent Film Festival gave us a peek at a variety of offerings this year. Here are a few more. 9500 Liberty (Tues 10/20 & Fri 10/23) Local-born Eric Byler (director of the amazing Charlotte Sometimes)… [»Read]
A surefire way to grab your audience’s attention is to break out into song. If you’re going to go that route, however, you damn well better have something to say. In After the Storm, playing Thu, 10/22 and Fri, 10/23 at Dole Cannery, there’s a lot that… [»Read]
