THE NOTEBOOK 1/2Opening Friday Twin 13-year-old boys endure the ancillary horrors of war in THE NOTEBOOK, a relentlessly grim WWII drama by Hungarian filmmaker János Szász. Shortlisted for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2014 Academy Awards, it’s an admirable piece of craftsmanship if you’ve got the stomach for it. Anyone expecting a remake of […]
Glenn McDonald
Posted inFilm & Television
An offensive bourgeois quest for meaning in Hector and the Search for Happiness
HECTOR AND THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS Opening Friday Hector is curiously unhappy. A well-off London psychiatrist, he seems to have all the necessary components of happinessan adoring girlfriend, a job he likesand yet he can’t seem to turn the corner into contentment. So Hector sets off on a globe-trotting journey to find himself, resulting in […]
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Bonus Materials: David Lynch, nightmare membranes and Eraserhead
Thirty-seven years after its initial theatrical release, David Lynch’s debut feature film Eraserhead has been reissued and upgraded to U.S. Blu-ray format in a gorgeous package from the stalwart archivists at the Criterion Collection. The reissue includes a full 4K digital restoration, six additional short films and the usual generous assortment of new and archival […]
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Adorable flippers in Dolphin Tale 2
DOLPHIN TALE 2 Opening Friday For parents of younger kids, quality family films are a precious commodity. Watching a good family movie can be crazy funchildren’s laughter is virulently contagious. And since kids like to watch their favorite movies over and over, parents will eventually be watching those movies over and over, too. I’ve seen […]
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A good old time in Land Ho!
LAND HO! Opening Friday As a rule, movies are dominated by the young. So LAND HO!, a gentle Icelandic import about the adventures of two 70-something men on an impromptu walkabout, is refreshing. This isn’t a grumpy-old-men farce playing age for laughs. It’s a genuine, observant, character-driven comedy. Mitch (Earl Lynn Nelson) and Colin (Paul […]
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Simulcasts bring TV, theater and more to cinemas
The movie theater: It’s not just for movies anymore. With the advent of digital distribution in cinemas, exhibitors have a wide range of options for screening events this fall. Most theaters in the Triangle have switched to digital, and many now host simulcastsby way of live satellite feedsof sports, concerts and cultural events, from boxing […]
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Bonus Materials: Bullet trains and class rage in Snowpiercer
The brutal and visionary South Korean science fiction thriller Snowpiercer made a splash a few weeks back when it finally got a wide release in U.S. theaters after an extended tussle with distributor Harvey Weinstein. That dispute almost kept it out of theaters here. Details are too complicated to go into, but the upshot is […]
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Bonus Materials: Romantic comedy + salsa dancing = Cuban Fury
A genuinely pleasant surprise, the U.K. romantic comedy Cuban Fury is one of those imports that surfaces theatrically in a few major U.S. markets, then quietly rotates into the DVD/digital marketplace, where it can be properly enjoyed. The always amiable Nick Frost stars as Bruce Garrett, a former teenage salsa-dancing champion who lost his nerve […]
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Richard Linklater’s groundbreaking 12-year project culminates in the remarkable Boyhood
Boyhood Opening Friday In 2002, director Richard Linklater began a remarkable movie-making experiment known as The Twelve Year Project. The idea: to make a series of short films, one per year, following a boy’s growth from age 6 to 18from first grade to college freshmanusing the same cast each year, with the intention of cutting […]
Posted inCulture
Bonus Materials: man, machine and Transcendence
Hollywood has yet to make an adaptation of William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. And it’s not for lack of trying—probably a dozen projects have started and stalled in the last 30 years. But if you’ve read the book and followed science fiction movies in the years since, it’s astounding how many of Gibson’s ideas […]
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