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Review: The Pool
Filed under: Drama, Foreign Language, Independent, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews, Cinematical Indie 
Outwardly confident yet quietly insecure, 18-year-old Venkatesh Chavan climbs into a tree and stares at a pristine pool. He's a domestic worker at a nearby hotel in the Indian coastal city of Panjim, Goa, and he's ambitious enough to know that he wants something more, even if he doesn't know what, exactly. He performs his duties, meets his considerably younger friend Jhangir Badshah to sell plastic bags to earn extra money, studies the untouched pool and the surrounding, uninhabitated house and garden grounds, and retires for the night. Boiled down to its essence,
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TIFF Review: Paris 36
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Foreign Language, New Releases, Sony Classics, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Toronto International Film Festival, Cinematical Indie 
Paris 36 tries to do a dozen different things, and does none of them well. But even that description may not be harsh enough, because it makes the film sound ambitious. It's not. Director Christophe Barratier, whose The Chorus was a quality rendition of an age-old formula, doesn't even pretend to give much thought to any of the disparate elements he assembles here. This is one of those middlebrow period-piece comedies that mistakes frenzy for energy and...
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Review: Everybody Wants to Be Italian
Filed under: Foreign Language, Independent, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews 
The modern romantic comedy has long treated novelty like a venereal disease, fleeing any thought of invention as it foists the same tired, rigid formula on viewers content to consume familiar pap dressed up in slightly different duds. Still, if the average studio rom-com offers little of worth aside from the occasional endearing performance (and no, I don't mean you, Ms. Bullock), there's something even more noxious about the strain of ethnic-indie romances pioneered by 2002's smash hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which charmed audiences by taking recognizable conventions and spicing them up with broad, brash stereotypes....
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Review: Mister Foe
Filed under: Drama, Independent, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews 
Jamie Bell makes the best of a bad situation as Hallam, the titular teenage protagonist of Mister Foe, whose anger, resentment and paranoia drive him from his father's remote Scottish Highlands estate to the streets of Edinburgh in search of solace. Hallam's mother recently drowned in the loch behind the house, the apparent victim of a freak boating accident, and his dad (Ciarán Hinds) has moved on and married his former secretary Verity (Claire Forlani), whom he was seeing before his wife's untimely passing and whom Hallam believes is a gold-digging hooker responsible for mom's death....
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Review: Bangkok Dangerous
Filed under: Action, Thrillers, New Releases, Lionsgate Films, Theatrical Reviews, Remakes and Sequels 
"One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble..."
-Murray Head Don't ask me what happened to the real Nicolas Cage, because I don't know where he is. I don't know what happened to the man who left Las Vegas, or the man who made Donald Kaufman into such an endearing figment of imagination, or the man who stole diapers as he stole hearts. All I've seen of late is a face, a name, a profile, a character, the artist formerly known as Nic Cage, an entity on auto-pilot and damn near self-parody that...
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Indie Spotlight: New Releases for Sept. 5
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Foreign Language, Gay & Lesbian, New Releases, Family Films, Columns, Indie Spotlight  Look, I don't want to make it sound like an either/or thing. You can see wide-release films AND art-house indies. I'm just saying that on this particular weekend, the only wide release is something starring Nicolas Cage in a mullet, and it wasn't screened for critics. So if it were an either/or thing, this would be a good time to become an art-house fanatic, and the Indie Spotlight is here to let you know what your options are.
Seven...
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McConaughey Keeps His Shirt on for 'Surfer, Dude' Premiere in Austin
Filed under: Comedy, New Releases, Images
Where else would you expect to see the world premiere of a comedy in which Matthew McConaughey is shirtless for the entire film? It had to be Austin. Instead of the traditional red carpet, the stars of Surfer, Dude strolled down a green carpet in 90-plus-degree weather last night, as part of a benefit screening for Austin Film Society. McConaughey (who kept his shirt on the entire time, sadly) was joined by a half-dozen of his co-stars, including Woody Harrelson, as well as director/co-writer S.R. Bindler. Bindler's previous film, the documentary Hands on a Hardbody, played at the Dobie...
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'Bangkok [Not So] Dangerous'?
Filed under: Action, New Releases, Lionsgate Films, Movie Marketing, Remakes and Sequels 
In advance of its release last week, Disaster Movie was slammed for the insensitivy of its release date -- on the third anniversary of one of the worst natural disasters in history. (Hurricane Gustav narrowly avoided adding injury to insult.) Probably for a variety of reasons, audiences stayed away in droves, as Eugene noted. Now Bangkok Dangerous, the only wide release scheduled for this week, finds itself overtaken by current events. What else do the two apparent stinkers have in common? Lionsgate, their US distributor.
Lionsgate must pride...
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New DVD Picks of the Week: 'The Promotion' & 'Monster Camp'
Filed under: Comedy, Documentary, New Releases, DVD Reviews, New on DVD, Home Entertainment  The Promotion
After Dane Cook's Employee of the Month ripped out our interest in office-led comedies and stomped on it, The Promotion was a welcome breath of fresh air that has become a comedic emblem over here at Cinematical. It's graced a top films of 2008 list, popped up in a few fanrants, and has been part of a lot of multimedia. And now, after a modest release, the comedy is on DVD.
Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly play supermarket workers...
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Weekend Box Office: The Labor Day Lull
Filed under: New Releases, Box Office  The most exciting news from Labor Day weekend at the box-office -- traditionally a slow period -- is that America seems to have caught on to the scam that Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have been running for... what is it now? Almost three years? (I'm not counting the Scary Movie franchise, which always retained some redeeming value despite their idiocy.) Anyway, their latest travesty, Disaster Movie, opened to $6.9 million over four days, just over a third of the (nearly identical to each other) first three-day weekends for Date Movie, Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans. Could that be the end of that?
Not...
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