NYC Film Critic

Kristen Wiig makes the leap from Saturday Night Live performer to leading lady with Bridesmaids, a new marital-themed comedy she co-wrote and stars in.  I interviewed the movie’s director Paul Feig, who does a nice job escalating the various comic hijinks the occur throughout.  Read the story over at Film Journal.

The Tribeca Film Festival turned 10 this year and before this week is out I hope to post a batch of reviews of the movies I’ve seen since the festival began last Wednesday.  In the meantime, here’s a short interview I did with the director of one of the most striking movies I’ve come across in this year’s line-up.  The debut feature of Canada-based filmmaker Panos Cosmatos , Beyond the Black Rainbow is a fascinatingly odd mash-up of vintage ’80s sci-fi tropes and mise-en-scene that achieves its own distinct style.  There is a plot–one that involves a young girl with psychic powers attempting to escape the institution where she’s being held prisoner–but it decidedly takes a backseat to mood and atmosphere.  When Black Rainbow ends, you’re not entirely certain whether you actually saw a movie or just dreamed the whole thing and I mean that as a compliment.

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POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
Directed by Morgan Spurlock
**1/2

Perhaps befitting Morgan Spurlock’s self-stated desire to make “the blockbuster of documentaries,” POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is the Super Size Me director’s most high-concept film to date.  As he regularly reminds us during the course of the movie, Spurlock has made a film about advertising that’s been paid for entirely by advertisers.

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The Princess of Montpensier
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier
Screenplay by Jean Cosmos, Francois-Olivier Rousseau, Bertrand Tavernier
Starring Melanie Thierry, Lambert Wilson, Gregorie Leprince-Ringuet, Gaspard Ulliel
***1/2

With its agreeable mixture of petty scheming, bedroom intrigue, and self-absorbed alpha males and the naive temptresses that love them, the French costume drama The Princess of Montpensier is perhaps best described as medieval pulp fiction.  Co-written and directed by veteran Gallic filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, the film is based on an almost 350-year-old story by Madame de la Fayette, the penname of a 17^th century countess that published much of her work anonymously during her lifetime.

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I filed a brief reaction to Kelly Reichardt’s terrific Western Meek’s Cutoff when I first saw the film at the New York Film Festival last October.  Now that the movie is finally opening in theaters for the rest of you to see (as well you should) I’ve expanded on those thoughts in a review for Film Journal.  Keep checking the film’s official website to learn when its opening in your area and make plans to see it as soon as it arrives.

Silliness reigns in David Gordon Green’s foul-mouthed fantasy spoof Your Highness, co-written by and starring Danny McBride, one of the more unique comic personalities working today.  It’s an almost deliberately messy and imperfect movie, but I laughed quite a bit, perhaps because I have a soft spot in my heart for the vintage ’80s fantasies its riffing on.  Read my mild defense of this proudly dumb comedy over at Film Journal.

Blank City
Directed by Céline Danhier
***
New York City had it rough all over during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s but the hardest hit neighborhood—apart from virtually the entire Bronx, of course—had to be Manhattan’s Lower East Side.  Visitors to that part of town would have been treated to such unwelcoming sights as derelict buildings, rampant crime and drug abuse.  On the other hand, the sheer ugliness of the surroundings meant that rents were either dirt cheap or non-existent.  That made the area a prime location for the waves of young artists that were still moving into New York even as the rest of the city’s population seemed to be looking for a way out.

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