A rather appealing if throwaway cat and mouse thriller, Headhunters introduces us immediately to the forcefully charming persona and slick art-thievery methods of its protagonist, Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie). His criminal activities subsidize a career as über-successful corporate headhunter, but he makes no bones about having overextended himself for the sake of his Nordic model-beautiful […]
Movies
AFI FEST 2011 Film Review: Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
It’d be best to be prepared before going into this, for a long slow evening. Amongst the various aims of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s new film is the conjuring of the strange all-night atmosphere experienced by a group of officials in search for a dead body, based on the experiences of his co-screenwriter, Ercan Kesel, a […]
AFI FEST 2011 Film Review: The Loneliest Planet (Dir. Julia Loktev, 2011, USA/Germany)
This is really a one idea movie, but it’s a very good idea (taken from a short story by Tom Bissell). Nica and Alex are young travelers in Georgia, engaged to be married, who depart on a trek with mountain guide Dato. And then Something Happens. To explain the Something would be to spoil the […]
Film Review: ‘J. Edgar’
J. Edgar stars Leonardo DiCaprio (Titanic) as J. Edgar Hoover, the former director of the FBI. An aging Hoover dictates his memoirs to a writer, focusing on his rise to power and the policies and procedures that he implemented during his reign. Told through flashbacks, the story takes place over the course of about 50 years but mainly concentrates on the Lindberg baby kidnapping case, as well as on Hoover’s relationship with his secretary, Helen Gandy (The Ring’s Naomi Watts), and his associate director Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer, the twins from The Social Network).
AFI FEST 2011 Film Review: Nightmare Alley (Dir. Edmund Goulding, 1947, USA)
A real Hollywood oddity, this is a cracking carnival noir charting the rise and fall of hubristic mentalist Stanton Carlisle – Stanton the Great – from cheap clairvoyant-act barker to quasi-religious swarmi, to.. well, that’d be spoiling it, but by the look on Tyrone Power’s face, he knew it had to be. Power plays […]