Adventureland, Greg Mottola, 2009

Mottola's stoned carnival workers, both intellectually and chronologically, fall somewhere between Richard Linklater's varsity slackers and Whit Stillman's neurotic Fourierists. More importantly, they reside in the same casual, lived-in space that makes this naturalist Summer's tale as eminently watchable as either Dazed & Confused or Metropolitan.

Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino, 2009

Tarantino cements his legacy as a singular visionary with Inglourious Basterds, a masterful series of tete-a-tetes birthed of the director's own peculiar universe, wherein claustrophobic chamber dramas masquerade as populist action set pieces with the audience none the wiser.

sb/sm - Wish (Her) Well

A little selfish plug of the new music video for my other extracurricular activity, Stephen Brower & the Silent Majority:

Bakjwi (Thirst), Park Chan-wook, 2009

Park squanders an engaging first act and the promising premise of real world vampirism with an absolute deluge of bad ideas, aimless sequences, and generally ill conceived filmmaking.

Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood, 2008

Eastwood's Walt Kowalski is a believable curmudgeon, all bile and venom atop a heart of gold. Unfortunately, the world constructed around Walt is decidedly two dimensional and littered with stereotypes, caricatures, and poor performances.

Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (I've Loved You So Long), Philippe Claudel, 2008

Claudel gambles heavily in making his heroine a grossly unsympathetic, almost catatonic figure. Unfortunately, however, that very gamble is rendered moot by a lazy and sentimental bit of narrative sleight of hand.

Elegy, Isabel Coixet, 2008

The cold, near-clinical tone of Roth's novel permeates Coixet's retelling, making for an especially poor filmic translation. A stellar cast is left to flounder in the morass.