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Greatness—Out of Reach

I can almost feel tears welling up in my eyes at the last scene of What We Do Is Secret, the new biopic about 1970s Los Angeles punk band The Germs. The band’s visionary frontman is disintegrating on camera, dying of an intentional heroin overdose, while the incredulous guitar player watches mourning fans circling the body of a fallen rock star on television.

An Ode to Los Angeles Even Woody Allen May Like

Woody Allen’s Manhattan comes up the most when speaking of the interesting visual perspectives and black and white photography of In Search of a Midnight Kiss, Alex Holdrige’s new beautifully captured homage to Los Angeles. But given Woody’s vocal hatred of the City of Angels, the comparison can feel contradictory as we watch the sun-drenched, parking lot-filled, and apocalyptically empty Downtown LA. The city serves as a backdrop for the impromptu roamings of Wilson and Vivian, two twenty-somethings verging on thirty-somethings, who search not for sweeping romance nor for existential answers, but for all the drive and hope and change symbolized in the midnight kiss on New Year’s.

Cut In Two, Sagnier Contemplates Chabrol, America

At age 78, Claude Chabrol is still at it. But his work is not suffering for his age: La Fille Coupee en Deux, released in the US as A Girl Cut in Two, is a masterpiece of suspense, a drama that delves deep into relations between people and their perceptions of each other. The film centers on the young Gabrielle Deneige (translated in the subtitles as Gabrielle Snow), a young and beautiful television weather girl played by Ludivine Sagnier. In America, she says, “there are so many taboos that the only people who are highly sexualized are hysterical.”

Always the Brideshead, Never Quite Right

There's at least one occasion on which Julian Jarrold's new film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's classic novel Brideshead Revisited could be indispensable. If you're assigned the novel for a class, don't want to actually read it, and need to develop a passing familiarity with its basic plot and thematic structures, look no further!

Man on Wire Gives New Meaning to Getting High

On August 7th, 1974, at 7:15 a.m., Philippe Petit, saluted the world from a cable strung between the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. Man on Wire, a documentary by James Marsh, traces Philippe Petit’s extraordinary journey from a dentist’s office in France to his high wire act 1,350 feet above the streets of New York City.

The Dark Knight Offers Awesome Explosions, Moral Complexity

The Dark Knight is the greatest movie ever made, at least according to the democratic standards of the Internet. Currently voted as #1 on IMDb, the movie’s popularity will eventually subside, but for now, our collective imagination belongs to Batman.

Slovenian Director Encourages More Morning Sex

“Rooster’s breakfast” is Slovenian slang for “early morning sex.” But Marko Nabersnik’s debut feature, Rooster’s Breakfast, is hardly any old toss in the sack.

L.A.'s Gang Scene Proves Tougher Than Skateboarding for Peralta

Think of Los Angeles, and what comes to mind? Hollywood, glitz, and glamour.

A Pretentious Welcome to Maddin's Winnipeg

Winnipeg. The word likely elicits no reaction from the average American: perhaps a head tilt or a slight look of confusion. What reason would we have to go to Winnipeg—much less think of it?

A Futuristic Film, Made in Homage to the Past

What if we left Earth and someone left the last robot on? This is the remise of Pixar’s latest film, WALL•E, which will be released June 24, and it’s what attracted director Andrew Stanton to the project.

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