“Tiny Furniture” is a tiny film with a witty ear and eye for the language and affectations of New York 20-somethings trying to build careers in the Internet age. That it was made for around $50,000 is impressive. So was the buzz surrounding the film after it won the 2010 SXSW Film Festival's jury prize for best narrative feature.
The heroine is Aura, played by writer-director Lena Dunham. Fresh off the plane from studying film theory for four years in Ohio, Aura arrives home with an undergrad degree but without her college boyfriend. He dumped her to pursue some vaguely defined ...
Born poor in Sao Paulo, Vik Muniz found his way out of Brazil, made a home and a family in Brooklyn and entered the “very exclusive, very restrictive” world of contemporary art. A few years ago, he felt an urge to return to his birthplace and use his talents to enrich a hardscrabble community similar to the one he knew as a child. His mission is captured in “Waste Land,” a documentary that won awards at the Berlin and Sundance film festivals. It starts a little slowly but builds to a deeply moving finale that sticks with you long after ...
Fueled by a wealth of footage shot during Canadian pianist Glenn Gould’s youthful peak in the 1950s and ‘60s, a new documentary fills in blanks left out by, say, an impressionistic work like “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould,” from 1993. But “Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould” might be one of the least apt titles of the year. Yes, the film somewhat demystifies a man who understood -- and nurtured -- his public image as a muse-sparked genius not quite of this earth. But it never gets inside the head of the guy whose performance of ...
Atlanta movie-and-TV mogul Tyler Perry has set aside his drag alter ego Madea and the affluent Southeastern buppies he likes to write about and now tackles someone else’s work, adapting Ntozake Shange’s 1970s theatrical landmark “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf” into a film. The result is often more drab than colorful, but the hard work of a talented cast sells the material in ways that largely overcome the Lifetime Network-style melodramatics. Not to damn it with faint praise, but this is probably Perry’s best film, forcing him to contend with another writer’s voice and ...
Who knew the French could compete with the British for the stiffness of their upper lips? A modern-day variation of Noel Coward’s “Brief Encounter” (although not an official adaptation), “Mademoiselle Chambon” is a beautifully acted miniature about a couple of middle-aged people who find themselves smitten with each other, but they’re too darn decent to act on their feelings. I’m not trying to trivialize the movie. That’s just what it’s about -- more an exercise in tone, freighted silences and restrained emotions than the sort of film where things, you know, happen.
Vincent Lindon plays Jean, a construction worker ...
Based on a true story, “The Sicilian Girl” has all the elements it needs to be a fantastic movie: blood vendettas, exploding cars, star-crossed lovers, family passions. So it’s a shame that the end result provokes a meh response. Italian director Marco Amenta covered this material before in a 1997 documentary about Rita Atria, the bold 18-year-old from a village in Sicily who dared to go against tradition and testify against the Mafiosi who ruled her village -- even though they had included her own father and brother, who were murdered by their fellow dons.
In his slightly fictionalized new movie, ...
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