Reviews

Review: The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2012: Live Action

The Oscar nominees for Live Action Shorts come down to five conventional narratives.

By GERALD PEARY | February 7, 2012

2.0 Stars

The Oscar nominees for Live Action Shorts come down to five conventional narratives. Best is Tuba: Atlantic from Norway, as its old-man-with-a-heart-of-gold protagonist at least has an impolitic spiteful side. Second prize? The Shore from Northern Ireland's Terry George, in which a man tries to find the woman he ditched. The American nominee: Andrew Bowler's clever Time Freak, in which a geek builds a time machine.

Review: Chandni Chowk to China
Director Nikhil Advani's quirky Chinese-Indian collaboration is the widest release ever of a Bollywood film, and the first ever kung fu Bollywood comedy.
Review: ''The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2009''
As with Best Picture, the themes of death, aging, and difficult love dominate the two Shorts Oscar categories this year.
Review: Shrink
Dr. Henry Carter (Kevin Spacey), the psychiatrist-to-the-stars of the title, has written a bestselling book on how to be happy. But — go figure — he isn't happy himself.
Review: Scenes from a Parish
James Rutenbeck's modest, old-fashioned, simply shot documentary is exactly the right way to tell a story of old-time verities and virtues, daily life in a Catholic parish in Lawrence
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At its best, Tyson becomes its subject's psychotherapist, allowing him to disgorge with no judgment and little restraint his memories, fantasies, impulses, and fears.
Review: The Merry Gentleman
In his startling directorial debut, Michael Keaton plays a mysterious figure moving among big city shadows.
Review: Tokyo Sonata
J-horror maestro Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) begins his timely, if atypical, tale with the downsizing of Japanese patriarch Ryuhei Sasaki from his administrative post.
Review: Next Day Air
Wood Harris, so supremely menacing as Avon Barksdale in The Wire , plays Guch, a hood so boneheaded, he robs a bank but forget to take the money.
Review: Sleep Dealer
Just when you thought Mexican cinema had lost its edge with films like Rudo y Cursi , along comes an ambitious and intelligent offering like this dystopic fable from Alex Rivera.
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The title of Scott Hamilton Kennedy's complex, provocative, ultimately uplifting documentary invariably calls to mind Genesis, and parallels can be drawn.
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Comparing prostitution with capitalism is about as old as the oldest profession itself.
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