Nathan Gelgud

Defiance opens Friday throughout the Triangle I want to say something positive about Defiance. But it’s hard. This WWII film is a trite clunker helmed by a director with no chops, and its awards-season release and pretensions to profundity are downright embarrassing. The best thing I can think of to say about Defiance is that […]

A Christmas Tale opens Friday throughout the Triangle I’m in awe of A Christmas Tale, but I don’t want to stand in silence, marveling over it; I want to break wine bottles and hoist strangers on my shoulders to celebrate it. Director Arnaud Desplechin’s raucous style rejects the idea of aweone imagines that complacent consideration […]

Yes Man opens Friday throughout the Triangle In the opening scene of director Peyton Reed’s Yes Man, Carl (Jim Carrey) is perusing the shelves at a video store when his friend Peter corners him and pressures him into coming out for drinks. In the puzzling world of this film, we are meant to understand that […]

Milk opens Friday in select theaters Milk is a necessary film that’s long overdue. The latest from Gus Van Sant is the story of Harvey Milk, the gay rights activist and San Francisco city supervisor who was slain by a colleague in 1978. As a biopic of an iconic figure, it manages to be noble […]

Let the Right One In opens Friday in select theaters Let the Right One In, a precious Swedish vampire movie directed by Tomas Alfredson, is a critical success and an art house hit, being met with the kind of hushed awe with which the movie regards itself. In the true measure of its stateside appeal, […]

JCVD opens Friday in select theaters Jean-Claude Van Damme’s legacy is perplexing to me, because he’s become world-famous by making movies whose appeal diminishes once you’re technically allowed to see them. Nearly all of his films are rated R, but it’s hard to believe that his audience is an adult one. Admittedly, I haven’t seen […]

Synecdoche, New York opens Friday in select theaters Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York is a film with a plethora of preoccupationssickness, death, marriage, cleanliness, gender, depression, the illusory nature of time, to name a fewand it works through each with unbelievable precision. Synecdoche explores its themesexhausts them, reallyinside a multileveled narrative rich with accurate symbols […]

Happy-Go-Lucky opens Friday in select theaters In the beginning of Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky, after a montage of Poppy (Sally Hawkins) riding her bike with an effusive smile on her face, we see she’s been wearing flashy, cumbersome boots while pedaling. It’s hard to imagine covering as much ground on a bike as she does in […]

Contempt opens Friday in select theaters Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt is a sturdy, lucid film with a clarity of narrative, performance and camera workcreated a mere three years into what has become the most formidable career in the history of cinema, forged on a body of work made up exclusively of movies about movies. It is […]