Review: Magic Mike (2012)

* * *
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Matthew McConaughey

A plot point by plot point description of Magic Mike would make it sound like a basic backstage performance story, where a wide-eyed tyro is taken under the wing of a solid mentor, and everything is fun until suddenly it isn't so much fun anymore. Fortunately for the film, it is helmed by Steven Soderbergh, a director with enough strength of craftsmanship that he can take well-worn genre notes and make them sing like new. This isn't to say that Magic Mike is a brilliant piece of work, but it's a solid enough drama, and a fairly entertaining one at that.

Review: Cloud Atlas (2012)

* * * 1/2
Director: Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, Tom Tykwer
Starring: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Bae Doona, Ben Wishaw, Jim Sturgess, Hugo Weaving, Hugh Grant

Cloud Atlas is a lot of things - ambitious, extravagant, messy, a mix of genres with sometimes jagged pieces that don't quite fit together - but it is never, ever boring. If audiences embrace it more than critics have, it may well develop a reputation as one of the most entertaining movies of the year. That is has some pretty fierce detractors is not surprising - the film does have its flaws - but, in the end, it is less a film than it is an experience, one you are either willing to give yourself over to or you're not. If you are, you'll certainly be rewarded.

Library Project: October 20 - 26

A busy week left me without a ton of time to work through my DVDs, but I managed to squeeze in a few good ones. Here's what I watched:

October 20: Far From Heaven (2002) - Todd Haynes's beautiful homage to the work of Douglas Sirk, anchored by Julianne Moore in one of her absolute best performances. It works brilliantly as both a throwback to a distant style of filmmaking, and as a film in its own right.

Friday's Top 5... Multi-Character Performances

#5: Ralph Fiennes as Ignatz Sonneschein, Adam Sors & Ivan Sors in Sunshine
Sunshine is a sprawling epic in which Ralph Fiennes plays men from three generations of the same family, each forced to confront anti-Semitism in various forms and to varying degrees of intensity. Fiennes creates three distinct characters within the film, while also instilling them with the common threads that connect each of their stories beyond the fact that they're connected by a generational line.

Review: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

* * * *
Director: Robert Wiene
Starring: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher

Robert Wiene's German Expressionist masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is, perhaps, the only film ever made where the production design is the star. Its jagged, highly stylized sets are some of the most memorable ever put on film and go a long way to creating the film's nightmarish vision of madness and horror. Caligari is a film that stands the test of time in part because it presents a vision so weird that it can never seem dated, but also because it's simply a great piece of filmmaking.