Tweet Originally posted at Splice Today Indie film tends toward realism. It’s not hard to understand why: on a low-budget, the special effects necessary for fantasy and science fiction are hard to achieve. Creative filmmakers aren’t afraid of a challenge, though. In recent years, and especially 2011, a handful of art house movies ventured into [...]
Posts Tagged ‘review’
NBC’s ‘Prime Suspect’ Reinvents ITV’s Restrained Jane Tennison
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on September 22nd, 2011
Tweet Anticipating the premiere of NBC’s remake of the British ITV series Prime Suspect, I’ve been watching the original, starting from the first series in 1991. Americans watch UK TV for a lot of reasons, but one of them is to revel in British austerity, their infamous reserve in tense situations. Watching Helen Mirren imperfectly [...]
‘Potter’ Embraces, Then Fights, The Darkness
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on July 14th, 2011
Tweet Thanks to Deep Research for linking! The Harry Potter series is a strange phenomenon: this week, 10 years into its run, it stands as one of the most profitable, popular and critically adored movie franchises in history. And yet, aside from a harrowing coming-of-age tale, it has never really been able to communicate a clear sociological [...]
From ‘Avatar’ to ‘Source Code,’ Living in a Fantasy
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on April 6th, 2011
Tweet Posted at Splice Today In his magnificent essay on Avatar in The New York Review of Books, Daniel Mendelsohn contrasts Avatar with The Wizard of Oz, another vibrant fantasy about travelling to exotic places. Using the end of Oz — the return to Kansas — as counterpoint to the end of Avatar — staying in [...]
‘Camelot’: Medieval Pulp Comes To Starz
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on March 7th, 2011
Tweet Posted at Splice Today Pulp. If orange juice is any guide, some people want lots of it, a few want a dash of it, and the rest want none at all. The same might be said for television. Pulp juiced up ratings HBO’s True Blood and CW’s Vampire Diaries. It worked for Starz’s Spartacus too, [...]
‘The Adjustment Bureau’ Aims For A Quirky Middle
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on March 1st, 2011
Tweet Full post at Splice Today You have a problem. You’ve got a good script in your hands, adapted from a story by Philip K. Dick. It’s interesting and sophisticated. It’s a romance and a thriller. It’s science fiction and fantasy. It has Christian overtones for Middle America and a New York setting for the [...]
Find Your Dad (or His Killer): ‘True Grit’ and ‘Winter’s Bone’
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on December 24th, 2010
Tweet Full review at SpliceToday Thousands of movies are released each year, yet I’m always surprised when two of them are similar. Usually I shouldn’t be, but two neo-Westerns about a teenage girl looking for or avenging their fathers is a little too coincidental. Why? Mainly because most films, independent or blockbuster, give us so [...]
‘Tron: Legacy’ and the Death of the Digital Utopia
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on December 21st, 2010
Tweet Tron: Legacy’s Flynns are ever-rare champions of the digital utopia of openness and diversity in the face of corporate and government control. Posted at SpliceToday. Comment there! Brainy blockbusters are rare. For every Inception there is a Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The most we hope for in our big-budget spectacles is some decent writing and a [...]
‘Black Swan’ Is En Pointe
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on October 18th, 2010
Tweet There are a lot of ways to screw up movies about women. So warped is the film market, directors have few examples to draw from: most films, mainstream and independent, are about men. We can even test for it. Like a ballerina en pointe, Black Swan maintains an athletic sense of balance: between a [...]
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Tags: Film, gender, hollywood, independent film, oscars, review 
3 Comments »Review: ‘The Social Network’ Gives the Web Its ‘Wall Street’
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on September 11th, 2010
Tweet Full review at SpliceToday. Comment there! I left The Social Network typing a quick review into my Facebook app, which, soon after, my Blackberry requested I update. As my phone installed and rebooted a friend called me about an event I’d posted earlier to the site; apparently we had too many RSVPs. While preparing to [...]
