“You have never seen a documentary like director Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing, and you’ll probably never want to again. An unblinking gaze into the banality of evil, this is a warped phantasmagoria of denial that’s essential viewing, even if it’s almost impossible to watch. When it was over, I had to go walk around for a couple of hours.” – Philadelphia Weekly, 07/31/2013
Monthly Archives: July 2013
THE TO DO LIST
“Many laughs are mined from Aubrey Plaza’s all-business efficiency in treating erotic encounters like homework assignments, and the dumbstruck faces of horndog dudes who can’t believe their luck. She learns the hard way why so many of these things are known by slang terms that end with the word ‘job.’ They’re work.” – The Improper Bostonian, 07/31/2013
BILL HADER
“It was supposed to be like Shit My Dad Says. I was Alan Alda, and Fred Armisen played Tony Danza. Whenever he’d walk in a room, he’d say ‘Hey, Angela!’ But there was nobody named Angela. He just said it before every sentence. It made us laugh incredibly hard, and nobody else found it funny. They were probably right.” – Philadelphia Weekly, 07/27/2013
CRYSTAL FAIRY
“The film was originally called Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus and 2012, a title that more aptly conveys the movie’s ramshackle style. Improvised on location during the downtime while Silva and Cera were making another picture, this is a rambling lark, an amusing trip that doesn’t really go anywhere, but you don’t mind taking it all the same.” – Philadelphia Weekly, 07/24/2013
THE CONJURING
“Sometimes it all comes down to craftsmanship. There’s probably nothing you haven’t seen before in The Conjuring, but rarely have you seen it done so well. A defiantly old school haunted house picture in which things go bump in the night, the movie elicits massive scares not from CGI or gore, but from careful camera placement and stunning sound design.” – Metro, 07/18/2013
GIRL MOST LIKELY
“A cartoonish parade of gargoyles and grotesques helmed with staggering ineptitude. Re-titled after premiering as Imogene to crummy reviews at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, here is a movie so baseline incompetent that scenes don’t cut together and the wobbly camera has a hard time keeping actors in focus for an entire shot. Crushingly unfunny, it’s a must to avoid.” – Metro, 07/18/2013
FRUITVALE STATION
“Closing credit title cards provide a cursory explanation of everything that followed, but they seem largely unnecessary. Fruitvale Station is most effective as a glimpse of one day in one life. Maybe it wasn’t a remarkable life. But it was a life all the same, stupidly and tragically snuffed out.” – Philadelphia Weekly, 07/17/2013