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).
Entertainment
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 […]
AFI FEST 2011 Film Review: Coriolanus (Dir. Ralph Fiennes 2011 UK)
Shakespearian plays have been adapted for the screen time and time again. “Othello”, “Hamlet”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “The Tempest”, the list goes on an on and the familiarity for a viewer with these stories is established before they ever enter the theatre. “Coriolanus” is a lesser know, and lesser adapted, play Shakespeare wrote. Well-known actor […]
AFI FEST 2011 Film Review: This Is Not A Film (Dir. Jafar Panahi, 2010, Iran)
This is most definitely a film, a wonderful, essential conjuring of something from nothing, a necessity for the film-maker, and the selfless defiance of a repressive regime. The Iranian government has banned director Jafar Panahi from film-making or from leaving the country for twenty years, and at the time of this film’s making, he was […]
AFI FEST 2011 Film Review: A Separation (Dir. Asghar Farhadi, 2011, Iran)
An exquisite salmagundi of moral grey shades, A Separation explicitly hands off judgment to the audience in the opening scene, as Simin and Nader sit before a judge and address directly to camera their cases for and against divorce. She wants to emigrate, to raise their daughter, Temeh, away from the difficulties and repressions of […]