Tribeca: Isild Checks Her Email
April 26th, 2008
Between that movie about the Egyptian anesthesiologist who loves fish and the one about the family eating couscous, the best thing I’ve seen at Tribeca 08 so far was Isild Le Besco checking her email during Thursday night’s party at the Apple Store. [more photos]
The Secret of the Grain. Abdel Kechiche, 2007. N/R
The Aquarium. Yousry Nasrallah, 2008. **
Two Mothers. Rosa von Praunheim, 2007. ***
There Will Be More Blood
December 12th, 2007
Between the noontime press conference at the Waldorf and the Ziegfeld premiere, Monday completely belonged to There Will Be Blood. If celebrity sightings are your thing, I’ve got a few stories for you — but I’d hate to namedrop Maggie Gyllenhaal, Liam Neeson, John Leguziamo, and the kid who played H.W. just for the sake of baldfaced bragging. Still, Marcy successfully handed copies of Twins to Peter Saarsgard (who high-fived her) and Amy Poehler (who stole her seat) — no doubt, both have already fallen madly in love with the book and are setting the machinery of Hollywood in gear to make us rich and famous, too.
Oh, and the movie? Minute for minute, There Will Be Blood still thrills more than anything else I’ve seen this year, and that’s even more true for the second viewing. I won’t apologize for taking a few more days to fine-tune my review — but I am glad we had already handed the film a slew of awards before Paramount fed us steak and martinis. Previously.
There Will Be Blood. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007. *****
Pusher 3
March 27th, 2007
Copenhagen is a tough place for drug lords, heroin addicts, and fathers–and Milo (Zlatko Buric) happens to be all three. Set over the course of one particular rough day in Milo’s life, the final installment of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy walks a thin line between character study and hard-hitting underworld expose. When we first meet Milos, he’s in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. In the next scene, he tries to accommodate his bratty daughter’s ballooning plans for her 25th birthday party–and then it’s off to figure out what to do with the 10,000 pills of ecstasy smuggled fresh from Holland. You see, Milos doesn’t know much about pills; he’s more of a dope man himself. There’s more than a little Tony Soprano in the harried patriarch and the way he has to juggle family life with the demands of the Danish underworld. It should come as no surprise that by the end of the night, Milos is back on the dope, women have been bought and sold, business associates beaten and gagged, and spoiled food isn’t the only thing that’s been spilled. I haven’t seen the other parts of the trilogy; apparently they’re only loosely related.
Pusher 3. Nicolas Winding Refn, 2005. ***
