Written by Andrew Welch

Julie, the character played by Juliette Binoche in Blue, the first film in the Three Colors trilogy, is not an easy woman to like. It’s true we feel for her—she loses both her husband and young daughter to a single car accident in the film’s first few minutes—but how she responds to her tragedy isn’t what we’ve been conditioned to expect from our movies. We expect tears, or even a version of grief bordering on mania.

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Written by Andrew Welch

The apartment across from ours has been decorated with cobwebs, skulls and tombstones since late September. The skulls are cartoonish and exaggerated, the better to gloss over the fact that a skull is a head stripped of its flesh, muscle tissue, teeth and eyes, not to mention the body it once a belonged to. It’s a symbol for death, and we’d prefer to leave it at that, thank you very much. Death is much more manageable when confined to the realm of semiotics.

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Written by Tara-Leigh Cobble

As we sat backstage at Central Christian Church in Mesa, Ariz., the 2,000-seat sanctuary filled with eager fans—those of both Metallica's lead singer James Hetfield and of filmmaker Justin Hunt, who directed 2008’s award-winning documentary American Meth. The sold-out crowd came to screen Hunt’s latest documentary Absent, which catalogs the long-term effects of absentee fathers, followed by a Q&A with Hunt and Hetfield.

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Written by Andrew Welch

Based on the premise alone, you might expect The Double Life of Véronique to fall within the bounds of magical realism. It’s about two female doppelgängers, one Polish (Weronika) and one French (Véronique). Both are musically inclined, both experience the world around them in wide-eyed wonder and both have some sense that they aren’t alone. In the hands of a Hollywood director, you might expect this flighty sense of a connection to culminate in a meeting between the two women, but this is the work of Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, not some Tinseltown director-for-hire. Kieslowski, who began his career making documentaries, infused all of his films, no matter how uncanny the premise, with a strict sense of realism and a concern for universal human experience. Véronique’s premise may sound surreal, but it is set within the confines of an apparently closed system.



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Written by Brett McCracken

Editor's note: We asked Brett McCracken, a regular film reviewer for us, to evaluate the Oscar nominations and give us his thoughts on what should have been nominated. Here's what he came up with: 

The 2011 Oscar nominations were announced this morning, and as is typically the case, there are some hits and some misses. By and large I think the Academy got it pretty right, with a few good surprises (Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom) and some bad (no Andrew Garfield supporting actor nom?). If I were to have a say in the nominations, they would have gone something like this:

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Written by Carl Kozlowski

The new superhero movie The Green Hornet has been dividing people's opinions long before its release. Traditional superhero fans wanted a typically macho actor to portray the hero, while other movie buffs have expressed intrigue at the star and director chosen to steer the film. At the center of the controversy are lead actor Seth Rogen (who also produced the film and co-wrote it with his writing partner, Evan Goldberg, who previously wrote Superbad and Pineapple Express with him) and acclaimed French director Michel Gondry, who's better known for making arty cult classics like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind than big-budget action films.

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Written by Carl Kozlowski

Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie have each carved niches for themselves as two of the world's biggest stars. Depp, of course, has been the master of quirky roles ranging from Captain Jack Sparrow, to the Mad Hatter of Alice in Wonderland to Edward Scissorhands, while Jolie has become the premier female action star on the planet through such films as Mr. And Mrs. Smith, Salt and Wanted.

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Written by Carl Kozlowski

Natalie Portman has literally grown up before the world's eyes, having made her debut on the big screen with The Professional at age 12. Since her preternaturally complex performance in that film as a girl who gets a little too emotionally close to a killer, Portman has continued to mine psychologically deep roles (including an Oscar-nominated performance in Mike Nichols' film Closer) with occasional popcorn fare (like the Star Wars prequels).

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Written by Andrew Welch

It’s no secret that silent films aren’t exactly in vogue right now. They’re considered relics, if they’re considered at all. Is it the overacting and garish makeup? Maybe, but most likely it’s that whole “silent” thing. As accustomed as we are to continuous noise, the idea of spending two hours in almost total silence can seem boring if not downright intimidating. It’s a monumental mistake, however, to ignore those early films simply because Transformers has more explosions or because actors like Daniel Day-Lewis seem to so naturally become their characters. Silent movies can still speak to us today if we’re willing to listen. They can move us, make us think and remind us of what it means to be human. In other words, they can still be everything a great movie should be, despite their perceived deficiency.

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Written by Carl Kozlowski

There's probably nothing Disney does better than spinning animated versions of fairy tales. And this holiday season, the Mouse House has outdone itself with the wildly entertaining (and only mildly sappy) new 3-D musical Tangled. While it's based on the classic tale of Rapunzel, about a girl whose gorgeous blonde hair's powers lead to her being kept in a tower away from other regular people, Tangled expands that threadbare storyline into an adventure worthy of Indiana Jones, with several action sequences that will cause dropped jaws in adults—even those who aren't bringing kids—and children alike.

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