NYC Film Critic

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost team up for their third big-screen outing, the sci-fi road comedy Paul, but sally forth without the aid of their longtime collaborator Edgar Wright.  Stepping into Wright’s place is director Greg Mottola, best known for helming Superbad and Adventureland.  I spoke with Mottola about the task of bringing Paul (which also stars Seth Rogen as the voice of the titular alien) to the big screen for Film Journal International.  Read the feature here and look for my review closer to the film’s March 18 release date.

Due to a variety of circumstances, NYCFilmCritic’s annual Oscar Talk back-and-forth took a year off, but I’ll still be tuning in to the Academy Awards this Sunday night to see how Hollywood divvies up this year’s bounty of little gold men.  In many ways, it’ll be a relief to have the Oscars over and done with–most of the big races appear to be set in stone and have been that way at least since mid-January.  That said, there’s still the potential for an upset or two.  My own predictions are below.  Check back on Monday* to see how I fared–here’s hoping I top my last year’s personal worst of 14 out of 24.

*Updated: Well, I definitely succeeded in topping last year’s poor showing.  Unfortunately it was with an even poorer showing–I struck out big time, only calling 9 out of 24 races correctly.  What can I say?  I got blindsided by the Alice in Wonderland juggernaut early on (namely because I actually saw the movie and had no idea why anyone would nominate it for anything) and never recovered.  About the only thing I did right was sticking with Inception for most of the technical awards and The Fighter duo of Christian Bale and Melissa Leo in the Supporting Actor categories.  Otherwise…yikes.  Nothing but net across the board.  Well, congrats to all the winners (yes, even you King’s Speech–you weren’t my favorite film of the lot, but you’re certainly no Crash or Gladiator) and here’s hoping I do better next year.  I mean, I couldn’t possibly do worse, right?  (Don’t answer that.)

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Like most people, I assumed the Farrelly Brothers’ best days were behind them.  So imagine my surprise when their latest comedy, Hall Pass, turned out to be a modest pleasure.  It’s no There’s Something About Mary but at least it’s also no Shallow Hal.  Read my review over at Film Journal.

Korean director Kim Jee-woon brings his unique brand of genre filmmaking to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s BAMcinematek program with the six-film retrospective Severely Damaged, which kicks off this Friday the 25th with the New York premiere of his latest film, I Saw the Devil.  The series runs until March 2 and includes Kim’s debut feature The Quiet Family, his recent western The Good, The Bad and The Weird and, my personal favorite, the 2003 horror film A Tale of Two Sisters.  (You can read my reviews of both the original film and its 2009 Hollywood remake here and here.)  I interviewed the director–who will be present for a Q&A following the Devil screening–via email for a story that’s appearing in this week’s issue of the The Brooklyn Paper.  Because I had to leave some of his comments on the cutting room floor due to space, I’m running the full text of the interview below.  I’ll have my thoughts about I Saw the Devil posted sometime next week, before its theatrical release on March 4th.

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Putty Hill
Written and Directed by Matt Porterfield
Starring Sky Ferreira, Zoe Vance, James Siebor Jr., Dustin Ray
**1/2

Matt Porterfield’s Putty Hill is an earnest attempt to do something different with the “kids aren’t all right” school of movies, which seek to depict the aimlessness and/or amorality of contemporary youth.  It’s a genre that’s almost as old as Hollywood itself, growing out of such socially-conscious one-reelers as 1909’s A Drunkard’s Reformation and The Usurer’s Grip, which warned viewers against the evils of alcoholism and loan sharks respectively.

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William Shakespeare’s immortal Romeo and Juliet becomes Gnomeo & Juliet a decidedly forgettable animated comedy that won’t linger in the memory for a day, let alone five centuries.  Read my review at Film Journal.

Orgasm Inc.
Directed by Elizabeth Canner
***

Nine years in the making, Elizabeth Canner’s eye-catchingly titled documentary Orgasm Inc. is neither a profile of a corporation that specializes in providing orgasms nor an expose of the contemporary porn industry.  Rather, this thoughtful—if at times clumsy—film is the latest salvo in the ongoing debate over the increased power of the pharmaceutical industry in shaping our health-care system, a subject that has steadily made its way from the headlines into documentaries and even narrative features (see the recent Love and Other Drugs…well, the first half of it, anyway).

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Sanctum
Directed by Alister Grierson
Written by John Garvin and Andrew Wight
Starring Richard Roxburgh, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhys Wakefield, Alice Parkinson
***

Home
Directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand
Narrated by Glenn Close
**1/2

Don’t get too excited by the prominent placement of James Cameron’s name above the title of this 3D-enhanced deep-sea diving adventure.  This isn’t the director’s official follow-up to the wildly successful Avatar; he’s not actually stepping back into the director’s chair until Avatar 2 and 3 start filming sometime next year.  Cameron merely executive produced Sanctum and lent the production the special 3D cameras he had developed for his sci-fi extravaganza.

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