Sin City: A Dame to Kill For Review
When Sin City was released way back in 2005, it marked a return to grown-up filmmaking for its director Robert Rodriguez. After starting his first foray into child entertainment with Spy Kids, he…
Browsing: Crime
Second Coming: Cinema’s Greatest Sequels: The Godfather: Part II Review - NP Approved
Mixing two storylines in different eras together is daring. That is even without considering the monumental success of The Godfather as a film. It sits proudly many a critical list and even more of people’s list, but there still rages debate on which is better: the first or the second. The first excels as a straightforward film with …
Strange Paradise: The Cinema of Jim Jarmusch: Ghost Dog Review - NP Approved
His name is Ghost Dog. He lives on a rooftop in Jersey City, surrounded by the carrier pigeons he uses to communicate with the mafia. Working as a hit man, he lives his life according to Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai. His best friend is a Haitian ice cream vendor who only speaks French. On …
Strange Paradise: The Cinema of Jim Jarmusch: Down by Law Review - NP Approved
Jim Jarmusch is one of cinema’s great minimalists, second only perhaps to Robert Bresson. For his third outing, Down by Law, Jarmusch focused his story on three perpetual losers for which very little works out. Losers and low-lives are Jarmusch’s most common characters and here he chooses a washed-up disk jockey, Zach (legendary …
Child of God Review
Child of God, the latest film from actor-director James Franco and based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name, concerns one Lester Ballard (Scott Haze), a young man living…
The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray: Joi Baba Felunath Review
Satyajit Ray enters the realm of childhood fantasies with Joi Baba Felunath, crafting a detective story that incorporates elements from Hindi faith with its rich tapestry of supernatural figures that a younger Ray may have found as engrossing as his heroes from comics and pulp novels. Joi Baba Felunath is the second film to feature …
Deliver Us From Evil Review
Although it’s tempting to start this review with a bunch of nasty quips riffing off of the film’s title (such as, “they could deliver us from evil, but not mediocrity”), it seems beneficial to try to resist. Not that the film doesn’t deserve all the slander it can get, but if we’re just playing the name calling game, then we’ll never get a chance to…
Whitey: United States of America V. James J. Bulger Review
Joe Berlinger, the Academy Award-nominated documentarian behind Paradise Lost and Some Kind of Monster, collaborated with CNN Films to make his newest film about Whitey Bulger and the recent legal proceedings surrounding his case. The film doesn’t cover much about Bulger’s personal history as a criminal, opting more to …
Niagara Integrated Film Festival: Four Corners Review
Four Corners is a film that illuminates unseen sectarian violence that has been plaguing the South Africa as its frustrated and impoverished citizens grow weary of playing by a rulebook that leaves basic necessities just out of reach. Stone-faced men appoint themselves as generals of brutal organizations, using tattoos as a permanent …
The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz Review - NP Approved
Non-fiction work such as documentaries, are investigatory and revelatory forces in cinema. The subject of focus is given various treatments or views via interviews, footage, and various settings of the subjects past and present. Sometimes the subject is hero or an moral cause.