Film & TV
Defibrillator: “Werckmeister Harmonies”
As director Bela Tarr points out, Werckmeister Harmonies explores the “boundaries between civilization and barbarism.” While cryptic, his experimental allegory about encroaching fascism is visually stunning and endlessly rewarding. The film begins in a pub.
Point/Counterpoint: AVATAR
After winning Best Picture and Best Director at the Golden Globes, Avatar is a front-runner for the Oscar’s top prize.
Don't Panic
Fish that steal walls, horses that drive trucks and a neighbor who always SPEAKS LIKE THIS are some of the many characters inhabiting the bizarrely funny world of A Town Called Panic. Based on a Belgian puppet series originally distributed via five minute episodes, this stop-motion animated film follows the lives of three individuals — Horse, Cowboy and Indian — after Cowboy and Indian forget to give Horse a gift for his birthday.
Heart of Gold
One would think writer-director Scott Cooper would deserve most of the credit for Crazy Heart's heartbreaking portrayal of a washed-up country singer.
Ah! Young Nazis!
Something is amiss in the village of Eichwald, Germany.
Top 10 of 2009
2009 has been sort of an up and down year for theater-goers, as triumphant highs, like The Hurt Locker, have shared screen time with embarrassing lows, The Squeakquel, anyone?
Best Of The Decade
While other magazines may have done their best to highlight the best of aughties cinema, we here at Street have the real recap of the past ten years. Best trip back to high school: Superbad (2007) Jonah Hill and Michael Cera rule as Seth and Evan, two delightfully awkward high-school seniors trying to live it up before graduation.
Interview with Saoirse Ronan
Street had the opportunity to catch up with Oscar-nominated teenager Saoirse Ronan about her new film The Lovely Bones , Miley Cyrus, and why she picks such sad roles.
My Favorite Movie Ever
Oh my god, this movie is so awesome! Loves it! That guy Preston is, like, tres sexy! And the way he professes his love for the popular girl Amanda at the end?
Guilty Pleasures: Great Expectations (1998)
Usually movies based on books are boring, sad or both (The Horse Whisperer, anyone?), but Great Expectations is so much different.
Top 10 Mary-Kate And Ashley Movies Of All Time
OMG², Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are like the luckiest girls ever! They get to travel the world, hang out with famous grown-ups and make their own movies.
Brotherly Love
Ever since Cain killed Abel, brothers have been at each other’s throats in a fierce competition for success, respect and love.
Guilty Pleasures: Jawbreaker (1999)
The late '90s were saturated with teen comedies; almost formulaically, most of these films followed a predictable arc, incorporating high school cliques, romance, rebellion and of course… prom.
Less Than Fine
Based on Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1990 Italian film Stanno Tutti Bene, Kirk Jones’s Everybody’s Fine presents a traditional holiday story told from a slightly different perspective — that of the middle-aged parent. In this family dramedy, Frank (Robert De Niro) is a newly widowed father who decides to surprise each of his children (Kate Beckinsale, Drew Barrymore and Sam Rockwell) with a visit after they cancel their planned trips home for a family weekend.
Reitman Takes Off
Street: Do you have a director’s playlist that you listen to for each movie that you do? Jason Reitman: Usually I have one song that gets me in the mood to write each film and strangely enough in all three of my movies that song has never [shown up]. For Thank You for Smoking, it was the song, “I’m a Man” by Steve Winwood.
Really Bad Lieutenant
A remake of an obscure, NC-17 cop drama, Bad Lieutenant: Port Call of New Orleans, starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Werner Herzog, sounds more like the result of a cinephile’s game of mad-libs than it does an actual movie.
Hit the Road
Considering the tremendous success of the last silver-screen adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel, No Country for Old Men, it’s no wonder studio giants The Weinstein Company seized the distribution rights for a movie version of the author’s latest Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Road. The eponymous film, the big-budget debut of Aussie director John Hillcoat, centers on an ailing but tenacious middle-aged man (Viggo Mortensen) and his young son, some years after an unspecified cataclysm that has left the earth bleak and barren, extinguishing almost all human life in a maelstrom of earthquakes and flames.
Stunning Red Cliff
Don’t believe what the trailer says about “the fight of a few.” Red Cliff features some of the largest, most spectacular battles you’ve seen in the cinema for a while.
Crash Landing
There are a number of animated films that adults can love. Pixar’s impressive catalogue is full of hilarity and thoughtfulness that children cannot fully appreciate, and taking a child to see Wall-E or Up could hardly be considered a chore.
