David Edelstein

'Into Darkness,' Boldly And With A Few Twists

David Edelstein — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:26:00 +0000

Before I tell you about J.J. Abrams' second Star Trek film, with its youngish new Starship Enterprise crew, let me say that just because I've seen every episode of the original Star Trek and of The Next Generation, and most of the spinoff series, and every movie, I'm not a Trekkie — meaning someone who goes to conventions or speaks Klingon or greets people with a Vulcan salute.

But hey, even President Obama can give the Vulcan salute; it's mainstream. We live — thanks to the Internet — in a fan culture. We can all get up to speed on anything quickly.

Two Indie Directors Go Confidently Mainstream

David Edelstein — Wed, 01 May 2013 17:42:00 +0000

Studios are putting most of their eggs in $100 million baskets these days, even as American independent filmmakers go hungry from lack of mainstream attention. But two of my favorite American indie writer-directors, Jeff Nichols and Ramin Bahrani, have new films with bigger stars than they've had before — films they hope will break through to wider audiences. The results, at least artistically, are impressive.

Nichols' first feature, Shotgun Stories, was a small masterpiece, the story of a blood feud between half-brothers that turns tragic.

Tom Cruise's Latest Headed For 'Oblivion'

David Edelstein — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:03:00 +0000

Transcript

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

In December, Tom Cruise starred as the title character in the film "Jack Reacher." In "Oblivion," which opened on Friday, he plays another Jack, one of few humans left on an Earth devastated by an alien invasion. "Oblivion" is based on a graphic novel co-written by Joseph Kosinski, who went on to direct the film, and it costars Morgan Freeman and Melissa Leo.

Going 'Mental' And Enjoying The Ride

David Edelstein — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:57:00 +0000

Mental is madder than madcap. I heard one critic sniff, "It's kind of broad" — and, Your Honor, the defense agrees! But if broad means "unsubtle," it doesn't have to mean "unreal." Mental makes most other movies seem boringly, misleadingly sane.

Why "misleadingly"? Because writer-director P.J. Hogan aims for a tone that's more concentrated in its craziness — and thereby serves up more concentrated truths about human nature.

With Vengeance And Violence, 'Olympus Has Fallen' Flat

David Edelstein — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:59:00 +0000

What surprises me about the ongoing discussion of violence in cinema and whether it influences violence in the real world is how people fail to engage with the male fantasy behind these films. There's a template for them, a theme; it hinges on violation and vengeance. A seminal action picture of the last 50 years is 1988's Die Hard, in which a lone male cop operates behind the scenes after an ingeniously orchestrated foreign attack on American soil. He's symbolically emasculated — he has no gun or even shoes, his wife is now going by her maiden name.

'Caesar' Comes Alive In An Italian Prison

David Edelstein — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 16:53:00 +0000

In the early '80s, Italy's Taviani brothers, Paolo and Vittorio, made one of the true modern masterpieces, The Night of the Shooting Stars. Set in the last days of World War II, when Germans laid mines all over Tuscan villages and Fascists loyal to Mussolini killed their own countrymen, it was a very cruel film.

But unlike, say, the more recent Pan's Labyrinth — where I found the violence bludgeoning — the movie was leavened by scenes of erotic passion, of farce, of transcendence that gestured to a world beyond the atrocities.

'Gatekeepers' Let Us Inside Israeli Security

David Edelstein — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 15:20:00 +0000

The Oscar-nominated documentary The Gatekeepers centers on Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but from an unusual vantage — not the Palestinians or Israelis on the ground, but six men at the pinnacle of the country's security apparatus: the former heads of the security agency Shin Bet.

The opening scroll of The Gatekeepers identifies the Shin Bet as the agency charged with defending Israel against terrorism, espionage and the release of state secrets and asserts that its heads have never been interviewed about their work.

'Mama': A Good Old-Fashioned Horror Movie

David Edelstein — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 17:24:00 +0000

I was weaned on horror movies and love them inordinately, but the genre has gone to the dogs — and to the muscle-bound werewolves, hormonal vampires, flesh-eating zombies, machete-wielding psychos, etc. It's also depressing how most modern horror pictures have unhappy nihilist endings in which everyone dies and the demons pop back up, unvanquished — partly because studios think happy endings are too soft, but mostly because they need their monsters for so-called franchises.

But Mama is an entertaining step in the right, which is to say backward, direction.

Looking For Bin Laden In 'Zero Dark Thirty'

David Edelstein — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 19:52:00 +0000

Kathryn Bigelow's kill-bin-Laden thriller Zero Dark Thirty is cool, brisk and packed with impressively real-sounding intelligence jargon. It presents itself as a work of journalism — just the facts, ma'am — but there's no doubting its perspective. It's the story of America's brilliant, righteous revenge.

The prologue is a black screen with sounds of Sept. 11: a hubbub of confusion and then, most terribly, the voice of a woman crying out to a 911 operator who tries vainly to assure her she'll be OK.

A Boy, A Boat, A Tiger: Reflecting On 'Life Of Pi'

David Edelstein — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 22:03:00 +0000

Director Ang Lee has a surprising affinity for the Indian hero of Life of Pi — that's his name, Pi, and he's seen at several ages but principally as a 17-year-old boy adrift on a lifeboat in the South Pacific. He's the lone survivor of a shipwreck that killed the crew, his family and a variety of zoo animals his father was transporting to North America for sale.

Actually, Pi is the lone human survivor. He shares his boat and its dwindling food supplies with a man-eating Bengal tiger.

Lee is a director whose works I've admired more than loved.