Search results for: David O. Russell

Usually a month where we tend to avoid the multiplex, the positive buzz on Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class and J.J. Abrams' Super 8 and the inclusion of Blacklist 2008 favorite Bad Teacher means we might be shifting between smaller and larger venues this June.

Both by design and by accident, The Misfits is a remarkably prescient farewell to an era. Huston’s intent was to chronicle the death rattles of the American cowboy tradition; the demise of rugged individualism in a modern world that rewarded conformity and commerce. The adventurous riders of the western plains were being corralled by the material pressures of consumerism; their free spirits permanently altered by the crushing need to draw steady paychecks in a new, commodity based, reality.

Feminists everywhere can rejoice that Hanna's Saoirse Ronan proves that girl power is more about kicking ass than shaking it (hear that Zak). Fernando Santos gives Tootsie a run for her/his money in To Die Like a Man. Venice/TIFF/NYFF Meek's Cutoff turns Manifest Destiny on its collective head in Kelly Reichardt's third film starring Michelle Williams.

Orson Welles’s brief flirtation with hired-gun hackery from 1946. Made a mere 5 years after Citizen Kane, The Stranger is a film notable mainly for its cynicism. To producer Sam Spiegal, who appears in the credits as S.P. Eagle, it was an attempt to cash in on the horrific revelations from the recently liberated Nazi death camps. To director/star Welles, it was a last chance at Hollywood redemption.

Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of any of Julie Taymor’s movies, but this is really the rare case where I blame it more on my own personal taste than Taymor’s value as a filmmaker. For some reason I always feel the need to tune out during Taymor’s work. I’ve never been a Shakespeare guy, and I was always more Stones than Beatles.