Movie Review – Green Lantern (2011)
by HELEN GEIB
Does it always have to be an origins story? On the basis of Green Lantern, the filmmakers would have done better to have skipped the explanations and started with the sequel. Read more 
Movie Review – Layer Cake (2004)
by NIR SHALEV
Daniel Craig plays XXXX, a nameless cocaine dealer and middleman who’s implemented a certain set of rules into his job and lifestyle and plans on retiring soon. One day, a bigwig named Jimmie Price (Kenneth Cranham) invites XXXX to his prestigious country club and provides him with two jobs to perform: find the missing, drug addicted daughter of a good colleague of his, Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon), and two, meet up with a gangster named The Duke (Jaime Foreman), take one million pills of ecstasy off his hands and sell them. Neither job is easy to perform, and this is only the first twenty minutes of the film. Read more
Thinking Outside the Multiplex in Indiana (June 17, 2011)
by HELEN GEIB
If there’s anything new opening in limited release, I missed the listing. That means catch-up and special screening time: I plan to try for Incendies this weekend and I wouldn’t miss The Two Towers on Tuesday for anything. What’s your moviegoing list for this week? Read more
Movie Review – Super 8 (2011)
by HELEN GEIB
Super 8 is writer-director J.J. Abrams’ homage to American science fiction and horror cinema of the 1970s and ’80s. It is determinedly formulaic, although on that score at least, the conscious nostalgia deflects most criticism. Read more
Film Buff Movie of the Month: The Killer (1989)
by HELEN GEIB
Short posts on my film club’s “movie of the month” series.
When I decided on “connections” for the series theme this year, the first title to come to mind was John Woo’s The Killer (1989). The only question was whether to pair it with a movie that influenced it or one that was influenced by it. I’d be hard pressed to come up with a better film to illustrate cinematic connections. Read more
DVD of the Week – Review of Kill the Irishman (2011)
by NIR SHALEV
Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson) is a hard-working Irish-American who lived in Cleveland in the 1970s and started out working in the docks. When the foreman, who has mob connections, abuses his employees too much Danny steps in and physically replaces him. Now Danny is very, very book smart. He hadn’t graduated from high school and had spent time in jail in the past but he’s still rather remarkably intelligent. He prefers to use brains over brawn in order to defeat his opponents, but because he’s a tough Irishman who’s roughly 6’5″ he can easily defend himself with fists of steel. Read more
Rewind: Films of the 60s, 70s, 80s – The Fury (1978)
by RICHARD WINTERS
This is another Brian De Palma-directed Hitchcock wannabe, this time involving a sinister government agent named Ben Childress (John Cassavetes) who wants to use the amazing psychic abilities of a young college-aged man named Robin Sandza (Andrew Stevens) for his own nefarious purposes. While he is in Israel with Robin and his father, Peter (Kirk Douglas), Childress decides to stage a terrorist attack, which he hopes will kill Peter and allow him to whisk Robin away to an underground research lab where no one will find him. However, Peter manages to survive the attack and goes on a relentless pursuit to find his son. This occurs while a young woman named Gillian Bellaver (Amy Irving) with equally strong parapsychological traits starts to have visions of Robin and his whereabouts. She is at a school that specializes in people with these abilities and eventually she teams up with Peter. Read more
Movie Review – X-Men: First Class (2011)
by NIR SHALEV
With comic book adaptations being released by DC Comics and Marvel Studios left, right, and center some are bound to be a miss. But X-Men: First Class is a hit because of a good screenplay (the most important part of a film is a good script), good actors, and true X-Men fans sitting behind the keyboard and the camera. Read more
Thinking Outside the Multiplex in Indiana (June 10, 2011)
by HELEN GEIB
It’s a good week in Indianapolis. The hotly anticipated The Tree of Life opens at the Landmark Keystone Art Cinema and there are several foreign films to choose from as well, including the critically lauded Incendies (also at the KAC) and The Princess of Montpensier (at the Movie Buff Theatre). For all the details on what’s showing in Indianapolis and around the state this week, read on below…. Read more
A Few Good Blog Posts (June, 2011)
by HELEN GEIB
A monthly round-up of recent blog posts I enjoyed reading. There’s more than a few in this month’s edition, but there were too many good ones to cut the list down any further.
Radiator Heaven mounts a spirited defense of Tony Scott’s Domino (2005) Read more
