How did Ridley Scott’s The Counselor, featuring the first screenplay from acclaimed novelist Cormac McCarthy (No Country For Old Men, The Road) and an all-star cast of Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz, and Brad Pitt, debut to an abysmal $8 million this weekend? Sure, with Gravity and Captain Phillips holding on tremendously the adult-drama marketplace is a bit stuffed at the moment, but you’d think a movie with so much prestigious talent would at least attract over $10 million on its debut weekend. Instead, The Counselor bombed miserably, not just at the box office but also among critics; in fact, our 5/10 review sounds like faint praise compared to the critical beatings that make up the film’s 32% percent on RottenTomatoes. Even worse, audiences stamped the dark drama with a rare “D” CinemaScore, meaning the film has absolutely no chance of making back its…
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A man hangs from a tree. The rope around his neck strangles him. His tiptoed feet slide around on the muddy ground, they’re the only thing between him and death. The camera holds a wide shot, never cutting as other slaves slowly start their day, purposefully oblivious since aiding this man surely ends in similar punishment. A white woman emotionlessly watches the man suffocate from her balcony but she turns away to attend her children. A brave slave-woman runs up to the man to give him water but he can barely swallow as he asphyxiates. No score plays. The only sound is the man gasping for air. It’s a moment of helplessness I’ve never felt until that scene. And that’s what Steve McQueen’s astonishing 12 Years A Slave gets right in its depiction of slavery on film. Gone are the fairy tale romance of Gone With The Wind and the…
Though released in early December 2011, the controversial buzz over Steve McQueen’s Shame began months prior when details of the films provocative nature, including multiple full-frontal scenes with star Michael Fassbender, came out after it received the infamous NC-17 rating. While such a rating pretty much guarantees box-office failure (the film only grossed $3 million domestically), studio Fox Searchlight Pictures never challenged the MPAA (take that Harvey Weinstein, who vigorously fought to change Blue Valentine’s rating the same year) and instead embraced the NC-17ness of the film, creating a marketing campaign chock full of sex, rustling bed sheets, and semi-nude bodies. The media quickly turned the film into the “movie with Michael Fassbender’s penis”, a generalization that may have led to a few nice jokes at awards shows but one that does a huge disservice to the film. Between a dynamite combination of acting and directing, Shame is a…
Though it has never quite reached the same level of masterpiece horror as The Exorcist or The Shining, Brian De Palma’s 1976 Carrie, based off the novel that put Stephen King on the map, is a classic nonetheless. It made an icon out of Sissy Spacek, and with its slow-motion nudity and gratuitous camera movements, it showed us what the great Alfred Hitchcock might have done if he never had to deal with the production code. After all, Carrie is nothing more than a coming-of-age tale of feminine sexual awakening gone to hell (aka. perfect Hitchcock material). That’s what De Palma understood about the text and his version is terrifyingly successful in exploiting how young girls act, be it outcasts, scorned popular kids, or nice do-gooders. The 1976 Carrie is uncomfortably provocative – it’s funny but creepy, something always feels “off” regardless of whether you’re in the normal halls…
I love a good long take, don’t you? In Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson envelops us in the music, style, and moves of the 1970’s roller disco scene with his great, 3-minute steadicam opener. Scorsese famously tracks Henry Hill as he sweeps girlfriend Karen off her feet through the halls of the Copacabana in the iconic long take from Goodfellas. In Oldboy, Park Chan-wook wows with a highly choreographed fight scene that lasts 4 minutes long uninterrupted. The great Robert Altman begins The Player with an 8 minute long tracking shot that weaves around a Hollywood studio where constant gossip and pitches can be heard around every corner. And Hitchcock, the virtuoso of cinema himself, made an entire movie out of long takes with Rope, tightly edited together to give off the impression the full feature is one continuous shot. So why bring up long takes now when they’ve been…
This weekend, Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity became both a critical and box office darling. With the best reviews for a nationwide release this year – it has a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and 
Aside from 
SHARF @ THE MOVIES 