DVD of the Week – Review of Harry Brown (2010)
by HELEN GEIB
Harry Brown (Michael Caine) is a pensioner living in a public housing estate in a depressed working class urban area. He is alone in his tidy apartment; his wife of many years is dying in the hospital. His uneventful daily routine is built around visiting his Cath and spending companionable hours talking and playing chess in the local pub with his longtime friend Len (David Bradley). Read more 
Best of the Decade – 2001
by HELEN GEIB
Winner: MULHOLLAND DR
Directed by: David Lynch
Written by: David Lynch
Starring: Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux Read more
Thinking Outside the Multiplex: National Edition (May 28 – June 4, 2010)
by MIKE MACCOLLUM
Well, all of you who follow this feature of the column (if, indeed, any of you follow this feature) may have wondered where it has been for the last few months. Well, thanks to a busy work schedule, a new dog, and many other factors, Thinking Beyond the Multiplex: National Edition had to go on a little vacation for a while. But we plan on being back next Wednesday, in our regularly-scheduled slot, with news of theatrical openings for August 20 and 27 (a little more up to date than what follows). Then, for the next few weeks, “current” columns will alternate with “catch-up” columns, until every week has been covered. Once everything is caught up and current, this feature will go back to appearing every other week (on Wednesdays, for the most part). Read more
Movie Review – Piranha 3D (2010)
by NIR SHALEV
Now this is the summer movie that I’d been waiting for for a long time! Here we have hundreds of naked women dancing with topless men and swimming during Spring Break while underwater seismic activity breaks rocks apart and reveals a lake within a lake, one containing an extinct kind of piranha. That’s right: thousands upon thousands of piranha fish that’d been extinct for over two million years and were living off one another, eating and tearing at each other are eventually released into a large lake filled with college students gone wild. If this doesn’t sound like your type of movie then you needn’t read on. Read more
Thinking Outside the Multiplex in Indiana (August 27, 2010)
by MIKE MACCOLLUM
Wow- only one new limited release movie opens anywhere in Indiana this week, and it’s a very limited release, when you take into consideration the total number of showings. Still, I guess you have to be grateful for whatever you can get…. And with that, let’s meet the one new limited release film opening in the state this week…. Read more
DVD of the Week – “3 Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg” Box Set
by HELEN GEIB
It’s a happy day for silent film lovers. Criterion has released director Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927), The Last Command and The Docks of New York (both 1928) in a new three film DVD box set. This a terrifically exciting and long-overdue DVD release. Read more
Best of the Decade – 2000
by HELEN GEIB
Winner: REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
Written by: Hubert Selby Jr and Darren Aronofsky; adapted from the book by Selby
Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans Read more
Thinking Outside the Multiplex in Indiana (August 20, 2010)
by MIKE MACCOLLUM
There are some weeks that make you glad that you live in Indiana, given the number and variety of unusual films available on big screens across the state.
This is not one of those weeks.
The five (!) national releases this Wednesday and Friday have steamrollered many (if not most) limited-release films out of most theaters in Indiana this week, leaving but a few scraps here and there… Read more
Best of the Decade – Project Introduction
by HELEN GEIB
This post introduces the Commentary Track “Best of the Decade” project. Mostly for my own amusement I’ve written it as an FAQ. Real questions- and comments- are welcome in the Comments section.
Q: What is the Best of the Decade project?
A: Over the next several months, Commentary Track will be publishing the results of its year-by-year review of the best films of the 2000s. While this will ultimately produce a list of the best film of each year from 2000 to 2009, the list is not the project. The project is an opportunity to make a survey of the decade, to re-visit and reassess the great films of the last 10 years, to encourage others to watch the films we most love and admire, and to promote discussion. Read more
Movie Review – Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
by HELEN GEIB
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was made to expose generational and cultural divides. Read more
