Film Reviews, Interviews and Articles
Snowden is a biopic about a man of great courage with none of its own. Opting to tell the story of the globally-recognized NSA agent turned whistleblower, writer-director Oliver Stone and co-writer Kieran Fitzgerald craft a narrative akin to a fan fiction version of Snowden’s Wikipedia page – except one should expect more nuance and knowledge from the latter – complete with unnecessary sex scenes, dramatically empty melodrama and, per Stone’s contract, loose-lipped partisan pandering. Read More
Fiennes, Brody, Dafoe, Goldblum, Murray, Law, Swinton, Ronan, Norton, Keitel, Schwartzman, Seydoux, Wilson, Balaban, Amalric, Wilkinson. Wes Anderson‘s latest may have more big names working for it than ever before but their characters are more paper thin than they’ve been, more fizzle than tonic, more Frankenstein’s creations than humans. His company of regulars – joined by a vast scattering of newbies – are relegated to playing furniure-chomping bit roles, filling the shoes of cartoonish sketches, slinking in long shadows of characters. From Willem Dafoe‘s brutish, brass-knuckled Jopling to a caked-up and aged Tilda Swinton, gone are the brooding and calculated, flawed and angsty but always relatable characters of Wes yore. In their place, a series of dusty cardboard cutouts; fun but irrevocably inhuman. Read More