Movie Review – The Far Country (1954)
by NIR SHALEV
Anthony Mann is my favorite Western director. All of his Westerns, or at least most of them depict anti-heroes and bad-guys-turned-good, but The Far Country is quite remarkably different. Read more
DVD of the Week – Review of The Big Year (2011)
by NIR SHALEV
Here’s a film that I hadn’t heard of until last week, but I took a chance on it anyway. It didn’t score very well with the critics and after having watched it, I can now claim that the critics didn’t get what they were looking for because they had certain expectations. That’s why it’s sometimes necessary to go into a film without any expectations. Read more
DVD of the Week – Review of Real Steel (2011)
by NIR SHALEV
There comes a point, usually very early in a film when the audience understands that it needs to suspend disbelief; and it does so willingly. In Real Steel, it was the premise alone that made me suspend my disbelief and just from watching the trailers. The basic idea that the logical next step in the evolution of the blood sport- the blood sport starting with the gladiatorial arenas in ancient Rome and ending up in our current times with hockey and boxing- is robots beating the tar out of one another in a ring is preposterous. When flesh and blood are removed from the equation, it’s no longer a blood sport, and therefore robot fighting can’t be the next logical step. But Real Steel makes you forget that from early on. Unless you want to hate the film anyway. In which case, why would you watch it? Read more 
DVD of the Week – Review of Vampire’s Kiss (1988)
by NIR SHALEV
Nicolas Cage was slowly climbing up the Hollywood popularity ladder after delivering one likable performances after another in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Raising Arizona (1987), and the terrific Moonstruck (1987). But his craziest, loopiest performance is in Vampire’s Kiss. Here he plays (with a mysterious but bad British accent) Peter Loew, a New York yuppie who ventures one night into a club, brings home his new date (Jennifer Beals) and then is bitten on the neck by her. Read more
Movie Review – The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
by NIR SHALEV
After a 23 year hiatus, Indiana Jones left us begging for more but has at last managed to wrap up the trilogy. Wait… I could have sworn that there was another Indy film that came out in 2007…. Oh, wait! No! It was just a nightmare that the entire planet shared. Well, back to the point: We last saw Indiana Jones Jr. and Sr. drink from the Holy Grail and ride off into the sunset, both literally and metaphorically. And now, master filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s first adaptation of the beloved Tintin cartoon books and animated series has hit the big screens in an all new 3D animated, motion captured, action/adventure extravaganza. It’s nothing short of breathtaking. Read more
Top 10 Films of 2011 by Nir Shalev
by NIR SHALEV
I don’t like making top 10 lists because it makes me seem like a film snob, but I am a film snob, and somehow I still dislike making top 10 lists! Can’t win them all… So seeing that almost everyone else out there has compiled a top 10 (or 20) list, here is my list for the best 10 films of 2011:
10. Rango
Industrial Light and Magic’s first 3D animated film is hilarious, echoes Chinatown brilliantly, and is one of the most beautiful animated films that I’ve ever seen. It defeats many other live-action films that came out last year because it has real imagination, a lovable chameleon protagonist, and it’s a Western. That’s an automatic win. Read more
There Will Never Be a Greater Film Than Citizen Kane
by NIR SHALEV
It all began in 1872, when a former California senator had a bet regarding whether all four of a horse’s hooves are off the ground at the same time during a trot. He hired English professor Eadweard Muybridge to use his latest invention, a type of motion camera to record the event. After that, with the advent of the moving pictures French “filmmakers” took over the process and motion pictures were in full swing. Then came the Russians; most notably and importantly Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin, 1925), whose editing techniques are studied and fully utilized even today.
And then in 1941, came Orson Welles. He wrote, directed, and starred in his first full-length film Citizen Kane and history was made. What’s so important about his film is that it utilized everything that was used throughout the previous six decades’ worth of filmmaking techniques and various approaches to storytelling. Read more
DVD of the Week – Review and Disc Commentary Track for Sunrise (1927)
by NIR SHALEV
Director F. W. Murnau is mostly remembered today for Nosferatu (1922) and Faust (1926), but his first American film, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, is his best film and also one of the greatest films ever made. Read more
Movie Review – Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
by NIR SHALEV
Globetrotting IMF (Impossible Mission Force) super agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is on the job again; this time to find a man named Hendricks and to stop him from buying nuclear launch codes from other bad guys. Sounds simple, right? Read more
DVD of the Week – Review and Disc Commentary Track of A Scanner Darkly (2006)
by NIR SHALEV
Philip K. Dick is one of the greatest sci-fi novelists of the 20th century and was also, rightly, hugely paranoid. He believed so much that the FBI and CIA had files on him that they did eventually decide to open case files on him. Unfortunately, even though he claims that they allowed him to see his files, the files simply claimed the fact that they wanted to open files on him for investigative reasons and there was nothing on him there at all. It’s a weird and sad type of irony. That was during the 1970s. Read more