NYC Film Critic

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
Directed by Daniel Alfredson
Screenplay by Ulf Rydberg
Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Erika Berger
**

This is the end, my friends.  Barring the recovery and publication of that much-rumored fourth manuscript by deceased author Stieg Larsson, Lisbeth Salander a.k.a. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and her partner-in-crime-solving Mikael Blomkvist a.k.a. The Journalist with the Prominent Beer Gut have righted their last wrong, exposed their last conspiracy and caught their last bad guy.

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Gareth Edwards’ feature-film debut takes place in a world overrun by giant alien monsters.  Great premise, but the actual film lacks a few key elements–namely compelling characters and a rich story.  Read my review over at Film Journal.

As a fan of the original Paranormal Activity (it was #15 on my Top 20 list last year) I’ve always been slightly skeptical about sequelizing a movie that probably should have remained a one-off.  Turns out I had good reason–Paranormal Activity 2 is basically the same movie as the first installment, just on a slightly bigger scale and with considerably fewer scares.  Read my review over at Film Journal.  And check out my review of the original film from last September.

Hereafter
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Peter Morgan
Starring Matt Damon, Cecile De France, Bryce Dallas Howard, Frankie McLaren, George McLaren
**

At some point in their career, almost every filmmaker feels the urge to explore issues of mortality and what exactly happens after we die.

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Shocking absolutely no one, Jackass 3D became the number one movie in America this past weekend.  However, the fact that it earned $50 million?  Well…that was kind of shocking.  Credit those higher 3D ticket prices!  Read my review of the film over at Film Journal.  And while you’re at it, you can revisit my review of the first Jackass movie from way, way back in 2002.  Either I’ve grown more mellow with time or my standards are just lower…

Todd Phillips returns to the genre that kicked off his career with Due Date, his second road-trip comedy after 2000’s conveniently titled Road Trip.  He’s traded up in terms of star power, though; that one starred Tom Green and Breckin Meyer while this one features Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis.  Read my feature story with Phillips at Film Journal.

Samson and Delilah
Written and Directed by Warwick Thornton
Starring Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson
***

I love great dialogue as much as the next critic, but it seems to me that American movies have gotten awfully talky recently, as if too many filmmakers have simply forgotten that age-old aphorism about one image being worth a thousand pithy exchanges.  That’s especially true with the recent spate of movie romances—both of the comic and dramatic variety—where the couple that’s meant to be falling in love or that’s already in love talks endlessly at each other about their feelings without ever seeming to share one quiet moment of genuine affection.  (I suppose I have to blame my all-time favorite movie, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, for that—Alvy and Annie do talk up a storm in that film, but their conversations are somehow just as intimate and affectionate as silence would be.)

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Closing out coverage of the 48th New York Film Festival with a final batch of capsules.  Look for longer reviews of three more movies–Mike Leigh’s Another Year, Julie Taymor’s The Tempest and Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter–closer to their theatrical release dates in December.

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Boxing Gym
Directed by Frederick Wiseman
***1/2

In a year dominated by documentaries that play more like fiction—think Catfish and I’m Still Here—thank goodness we still have Frederick Wiseman around to show us how old-school cinema verite is done.  A titan in the documentary world (in influence if not necessarily box office), Wiseman has been making observational portraits of American life and institutions since the late 1960s, with movies like High School, Public Housing and Domestic Violence.  His latest, Boxing Gym, is one of his less weighty films—at least when compared to something like Domestic Violence and its sequel—but it’s still a terrific example of his aesthetic.  For several months, Wiseman and his camera crew set up shop at an Austin, Texas-based boxing gym and documented the facility’s daily workings, filming sparring sessions, individual workouts, off-the-cuff, shoot-the-shit kind-of conversations and even registration sessions where the gym’s owner and chief trainer signs up new members.  As is typical in a Wiseman film, there’s no narration, no lower-third ID’s telling us a person’s name, no outside information beyond what we see on the screen.  The style is so different from contemporary documentaries—to say nothing of reality television—it can be difficult to adjust to at first.  But as the film goes on, you find yourself falling into the rhythm of this gym, recognizing faces and growing familiar with the surroundings.  It helps that the gym itself is such a visually interesting place.  This ain’t a ritzy Crunch or New York Sports Club facility, it’s a small, grungy, lived-in space with memorabilia lining the walls and well-used equipment covering every bare bit of floor.  In other words, it’s a serious place and the cliental take their workouts seriously, but never to the point where they can’t share a laugh with or lend a hand to a fellow gym-goer.  As excited as I am by the new narrative and formal possibilities that contemporary documentaries are experimenting with, it’s a shame that fewer directors are making beautifully observed slice-of-life movies like Boxing Gym.

Boxing Gym opens at the IFC Center in New York on October 22.

Inside Job
Directed by Charles Ferguson
***1/2

Charles Ferguson follows up his stellar Iraq War documentary No End in Sight with an equally detailed look at the recent global financial crisis that started in 2008 and—despite some reports to the contrary—certainly appears to be ongoing.  Much of the information is familiar, but Ferguson’s great gift as a non-fiction filmmaker is his ability to streamline and synthesize complex events into a clear, yet far from simple narrative.  Inside Job burns with the same anger that fueled Michael Moore’s similarly themed Capitalism: A Love Story, but this film is more focused and thoughtful, an unwise (but fortunately brief) detour into exploring the titillating peccadilloes of Wall Street types—you know, drugs, prostitutes and other vices—notwithstanding.  For me, the most compelling part of the film was Ferguson’s investigation into some of the country’s biggest business schools, where the teaching staff consists of many of the same economists that advanced the theories and policies that led us into our current mess and who still do consulting work for major corporations.  (Interestingly, though they are granted the title of “professor,” few of them are actually part of the faculty, which frees them up to pursue big paychecks in the corporate world in between school semesters.)  The knowledge that these are the people who are training the next generation of stockbrokers, CEOs, and economic theorists—thus ensuring that their harmful policies will continue for at least another generation and beyond—is more frightening that any of the horror films that will be coming out around Halloween.

Inside Job opened in limited release on October 8 and will expand to more cities in the upcoming weeks.