Film
Taped at the Kitchen Table
MilkDirected by Gus Van Sant. Written by Dustin Lance Black. With Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna, James Franco, and Alison Pill. (R)Midway through Gus Van Sant's moving and tender Milk, its subject—Harvey Milk, our country's first...
CinemaDope: Altar Ego
DoubtWritten and directed by John Patrick Shanley, based on his stage play. With Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis. (PG-13)In the course of giving the sermon that opens Doubt, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) puts forth the idea...
Stuck in Reverse
The Curious Case of Benjamin ButtonDirected by David Fincher. Written by Eric Roth. Based on a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. With Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Julia Ormond, Elias Koteas, Tilda Swinton, and Elle Fanning. (PG-13)On leaving a packed weekend screening of...
CinemaDope: Delta Blues
BallastWritten and directed by Lance Hammer. With Micheal J. Smith, Sr., JimMyron Ross, Tarra Riggs, and Johnny McPhail. (NR)Ballast is a wonderful little film by a director you've never heard of, with a cast of actors who weren't actors until they appeared...
CinemaDope: Old Dog, New Tricks
Gran TorinoDirected by Clint Eastwood. Written by Nick Schenk and based on a story by Nick Schenk and Dave Johannson. With Clint Eastwood, Christopher Carley, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, John Carroll Lynch, and Doua Moua. (R)Clint Eastwood, director and star of Gran Torino,...On The Ropes
The Wrestler (4 1/2 stars)Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Written by Robert D. Siegel. With Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, and Mark Margolis. (R)The Wrestler opens with the bombast of an '80s-era heavy metal anthem, a fist-pumping call to arms that...
CinemaDope: Life Story
InkheartDirected by Iain Softley. Written by David Lindsay-Abaire, based on the novel by Cornelia Funke. With Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Sienna Guillory, Eliza Bennett, and Andy Serkis. (PG)The idea at the center of Inkheart, a new film based on the...
Cinema Dope: Welcome to the Doll House
CoralineDirected by Henry Selick. Written by Henry Selick, based on the book by Neil Gaiman. With Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Keith David, John Hodgman, and Ian McShane. (PG)Quick—name the director of Tim Burton’s The...
CinemaDope: Semi-Automatic Teller
The InternationalDirected by Tom Tykwer. Written by Eric Singer. With Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Ulrich Thomsen, and Brian F. O'Byrne. (R)The International, a new espionage thriller from the director of Run Lola Run, gives new meaning to the...
CinemaDope: Cringe And Bear It
In film circles, it’s become something of an accepted truth that Ed Wood made some of the world’s best “so bad they’re good” movies. His low-budget fare was made with an imaginative if sometimes unpolished flair that extended to his work...
CinemaDope: Dancing Around the Question
Waltz with BashirWritten and directed by Ari Folman. With Ron Ben-Yishai, Ronny Dayag, Ari Folman, Dror Harazi, Yehezkel Lazarov, Mickey Leon, and Ori Sivan. (R)As I write this, the Academy Awards telecast is burbling along in the background, and WALL"E has just...
CinemaDope: Road Movie
I must have been insufferable as a teenager. Bookish from the get-go, I grew up spending a lot of time in my own head, dreaming of the past. I took up smoking and started collecting typewriters, thinking in some vague way that it connected me to the dead authors I...
CinemaDope: Teacher's Pet Peeve
The ClassDirected by Laurent Cantet. Written by Francois Begaudeau, Robin Campillo and Laurent Cantet, based on the book Entre les Murs by Francois Begaudeau. With Francois Begaudeau, Wei Huang, Esmeralda Ouertani, Franck Keita, Francois Marin, Nassim Amrabt, Laura...
CinemaDope: Nine Lives
This time of year is a real boon for fans of moviegoing. These are the people who enjoy going out to the movies almost as much as they enjoy the film itself—you can recognize them by their familiar banter with the ticket-takers and concessions crew, or by the...
CinemaDope: Costume Party
WatchmenDirected by Zack Snyder. Written by David Hayter and Alex Tse, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. With Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Patrick Wilson, and Carla Gugino. (R)For all the...
CinemaDope: Going Native
Even for longtime locals, organizations like the Northampton Arts Council can be easy to overlook. Those of us lucky enough to live in “artsy” towns find ourselves surrounded by a seemingly endless array of events—film and music festivals, food...
CinemaDope: The Fertile Valley
Film lovers in the Valley have always had a wide range of films at their disposal, even if that sometimes meant tracking down an obscure building on one of the many college campuses that pepper the area's map. This week, though, may trump all previous weeks as...
CinemaDope: French Connection
Not long after the Academy Award nominees were announced last month, some Internet wag opened a copy of Photoshop and got busy on a batch of fake movie posters. The result—circulated under titles like “Honest Oscars” and “More Accurate Movie...
CinemaDope: Dog is My Copilot
Wendy and LucyDirected by Kelly Reichardt. Written by Jonathan Raymond and Kelly Reichardt; based on the short story "Train Choir" by Jonathan Raymond. With Michelle Williams, Will Patton, Wally Dalton, Will Oldham, and Lucy the Dog. (R)Wendy and Lucy, the...
CinemaDope: An Animated Life
Already in its short history, cinema has had more than its fair share of milestones: the introduction of sound, of color, of Wookies and intergalactic space explosions. But through it all, one form of moviemaking always seems to be at the forefront of new...
CinemaDope: Mob Mentality
GomorrahDirected by Matteo Garrone. Written by Maurizio Braucci, Ugo Chiti, Gianni Di Gregorio, Matteo Garrone, Massimo Gaudioso, and Roberto Saviano; based on a book by Roberto Saviano. With Salvatore Abruzzese, Gianfelice Imparato, Maria Nazionale, Toni Servillo,...
CinemaDope: Pyramid Scheme
In the new documentary A Place At The Table, actor Jeff Bridges reframes hunger as an issue of national pride as much as one of health. “It’s about patriotism, really,” he suggests. “How do you envision your country? Do you envision it as a...
CinemaDope: Going Mental
The Great Buck HowardWritten and directed by Sean McGinly. With Colin Hanks, John Malkovich, Emily Blunt, Adam Scott, Ricky Jay, and Steve Zahn. (PG)Like the down-at-heel performer at its center, The Great Buck Howard is a bit threadbare, a bit shopworn, but still...
CinemaDope: Failing Grades
For all the wonders of our modern educational age—a time that makes my own not-so-ancient schooling seem ridiculously outdated—there remains a troubling lump of something dark and nasty within it. Sometimes living under the surface, unnoticed by older eyes...
Cinema Dope: Riding an Emotional Rollercoaster
AdventurelandWritten and directed by Greg Mottola. With Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, and Wendie Malick. (R)Sometimes a film so expertly captures a time that watching it becomes almost literally a transporting experience....
CinemaDope: Scout?s Honor
As Amherst Cinema continues its festival of animated Hayao Miyazaki films—more on this week’s installment below—I’m reminded of how fluid the definition of a “kids’ movie” can be. Too often, we take it to mean a movie that is...
CinemaDope: Blood, Sweat, and Tears
Sunshine CleaningDirected by Christine Jeffs. Written by Megan Holley. With Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, Jason Spevack, Steve Zahn, Mary Lynn Rajskub, and Clifton Collins, Jr. (R)Sunshine Cleaning is one of the quieter kinds of movies popular today, one that,...
Miyazaki Festival: Princess Mononoke
Hayao Miyazaki’s critically acclaimed animated film Princess Mononoke screens this week in Amherst. The story of a fated young warrior (Ashitaka) struggling to protect his village from forces of evil, the film follows his encounters with a mysterious princess, a...
Cinema Dope: Fare Trade
Goodbye SoloDirected by Ramin Bahrani. Written by Bahareh Azimi and Ramin Bahrani. With Red West, Souleymane Sy Savane, Navani Reyes. (NR)As Goodbye Solo begins, we're dropped into a story already underway. Two men are talking in a cab; the passenger, a sad-faced...
CinemaDope: A Fistful of Sharpies
As a younger man, I dreamed of being an artist. Not in the classical sense, perhaps—I never imagined myself chiseling away at great blocks of Carrara marble, or one-upping Leonardo’s famous smile. Instead, I was drawn mostly to the Sunday funnies and comic...
Cinema Dope: Stealing Home
SugarWritten and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. With Algenis Perez Soto, Rayniel Rufino, Andre Holland, Ann Whitney, and Ellary Porterfield. (R)Though baseball is at the heart of Sugar, a new film from the talented writing/directing team behind Half Nelson, to...
CinemaDope: Vito Meets Ringo
In any art, there are classics. Pieces—be they paintings or poems, sculptures or songs—that so encapsulate some moment in our collective sense of human history that they transcend the petty details of style and genre. Michelangelo’s...
Cinema Dope: Space Savers
Star Trek (fans ****, others ***)Directed by J.J. Abrams. Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, based on characters created by Gene Roddenberry. With Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Zoe Saldana, Winona Ryder, and Leonard Nimoy....
CinemaDope: Life of Ryan
Ryan Gosling has recently become something of a new-age Steve McQueen to a certain segment of film lovers. The thirtysomething actor broke through to mainstream viewers in the weepy Nicholas Sparks’ melodrama The Notebook, but it’s his later work—in...
Cinema Dope: Sweet and Sour
RevancheWritten and directed by Gotz Spielmann. With Johannes Krisch, Irina Potapenko, Andreas Lust, Ursula Strauss, and Hannes Thanheiser. (NR)Revanche, an Oscar-nominated film from Austrian writer/director Gotz Spielmann, is an interesting, meditative mix of...
CinemaDope: Try, Try Again
It’s hard for us to remember sometimes that even our most acclaimed directors have had their share of flops, failures and misfires. Often they come as a result of returning to a rich well once too often: Coppola made the mistake with The Godfather Part...
CinemaDope: Stained Glass
Angels & DemonsDirected by Ron Howard. Written by David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman; based on the novel by Dan Brown. With Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgard, Armin Mueller-Stahl, and Pierfrancesco Favino. (PG-13)Dan Brown's novel Angels...
Cinemadope: Island Living
In the year and a half since Easthampton’s Popcorn Noir opened its doors, the underdog theater—which operates on an innovative subscription model that lets it screen films without charging an admission fee—has emerged as a success story in a time...
CinemaDope: Balloon Animal
UpDirected by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson. Written by Bob Peterson. With Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, Bob Peterson, Delroy Lindo, and John Ratzenberger. (PG)Arrive early for Up, the new animated film from the men behind a string of hits for the Pixar...Cinemadope: Change of Venue
I suppose people still go to the movies, don’t they? There must be a market for the mindless matinee, given how many Hollywood turns out every year, and one assumes they do make money—although much of it these days may come not from the initial box...
Cinema Dope: Going Deutsch
JerichowWritten and directed by Christian Petzold. With Benno Furmann, Nina Hoss, Hilmi Sozer, Andre Hennicke, and Claudia Geisler. (NR)The German import Jerichow is a retelling of James M. Cain's erotically charged The Postman Always Rings Twice, and like that...
Cinemadope: Critical Thinking
It may seem self-serving to say it, but a good critic is a special thing. For some people, the critic is the most familiar name in their local paper, a trusted neighbor (if they share similar tastes) who always happens to have an inside line on something of note: a...
A Grave Matter
DeparturesDirected by Yojiro Takita. Written by Kundo Koyama. With Masahiro Motoki, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Ryoko Hirosue, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Kimiko Yo, and Takashi Sasano. (PG-13)You can be sure that Departures, the Japanese film that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign...
Cinemadope: Down On The Farm
Ah, springtime in New England. The time when a young man’s fancy turns to fly swatting. The time when flowers bloom and sinuses erupt. The time when a certain earthy aroma begins to waft over our towns, reminding us all that life in Western Mass. is...
Cinema Dope: A Whopper of a Tale
Food, Inc.Directed by Robert Kenner. With Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, Joel Salatin, Richard Lobb, and Vince Edwards. (PG)Food, Inc., the new documentary about how America eats, is a bit late to the party. In the last several years the "foodumentary" has...
Cinemadope: Moving Pictures
Few names span the history of modern art like that of Renoir. Beginning with 19th-century painter Pierre-Auguste, the Renoir bloodline has come to touch a dizzying array of artistic fields. While the man who gave us “Luncheon of the Boating Party” would...
Cinema Dope: Heavy Mettle
Anvil! The Story of AnvilDirected by Sacha Gervasi. With Steve "Lips" Kudlow, Robb Reiner, Tiziana Arrigoni, Kevin Goocher, Glenn Gyorffy, Lemmy, Slash, and Chris Tsangarides. (NR)Call it The Rock of Ages: the two protagonists of Sacha Gervasi's Anvil!...
Cinemadope: Memory Game
Every family makes its own legends. These are the tales that get trotted out at every Easter or Thanksgiving, or in the nostalgic warmth brought on by a holiday brandy. Over the years we tell them to new acquaintances, in-laws, and neighbors—every girl I ever...
Cinema Dope: Baby Steps
Away We GoDirected by Sam Mendes. Written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida. With John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Carmen Ejogo, Catherine O'Hara, Jeff Daniels, Allison Janney, Jim Gaffigan, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. (R)Being a movie critic engenders a certain amount of...
Cinemadope: Franco, My Dear
Every generation seems to have its actors that act as a sort of soft dividing line between generations. People like Brando or James Dean—actors who most closely resembled, often in appearance as well as effect, the rock stars that continually turn new...
CinemaDope: Deep Space
MoonDirected by Duncan Jones. Written by Nathan Parker, based on a story by Duncan Jones. With Sam Rockwell, Matt Berry, Robin Chalk, Dominique McElligott, and Kevin Spacey. (R)Somewhere between The Twilight Zone and today, sci-fi became the province of action films,...
Cinemadope: The Dark Tights
As much as movies are a part of my life these days, it’s hard to overestimate how special they were to a kid growing up in the ’70s and ’80s. Back then, mine was one of the last families on the East Coast (or so it felt) to get wired for cable...
Cinema Dope: Vienna Sausage
BrunoDirected by Larry Charles. Written by Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Mazer, and Jeff Schaffer. With Sacha Baron Cohen, Gustaf Hammarsten, Clifford Banagale, Bono, Elton John, Slash, Snoop Dogg, Sting, Paula Abdul, and Harrison Ford. (R)There's really...
Duane?s World
Being a theater manager offers many rewards, but glory is generally not one of them. I can say this with some authority, having managed Northampton’s now departed Pleasant Street Theater for a number of years. Do the job well, and you’ll most often...
Mr. Wizard's World
Harry Potter and The Half-Blood PrinceDirected by David Yates. Written by Steve Kloves, based on the book by J.K. Rowling. With Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Michael Gambon, Bonnie Wright, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Jim Broadbent, Tom Felton,...
Flood Warning
It was supposedly Margaret Mead who first uttered the phrase immortalized on car bumpers everywhere: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” It’s a great...
Cinema Dope: Shtick of It All
Funny PeopleWritten and directed by Judd Apatow. With Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Eric Bana, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, Aubrey Plaza, and RZA. (R) Any film connected to Funny People director Judd Apatow promises a few sure things: raunchy, juvenile...
Cinemadope: The Gang?s All Here
When it comes to American film directors, those few who can command a popular festival can be broadly cast into one of two columns. On one side are the Woody Allens—the man himself, obviously, but also his many followers (and, by now, followers of followers):...
Cinema Dope: Lap Dogs of War
In The LoopDirected by Armando Iannucci. Written by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Ian Martin, and Tony Roche. With Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Gina McKee, James Gandolfini, and Chris Addison. (NR)In The Loop, a scathing (and scathingly funny)...E-Edition
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