Category: 2011

  • Hugo (2011)

    Given Martin Scorsese’s prodigious love of film, it is hardly surprising that he made a mash note to the medium that has so dominated his life. To some extent, Scorsese’s entire catalog has been a love letter to movies, immersed as he is in the singular possibilities of cinema. What is unexpected, however, is that…

  • Killer Joe (2011)

    Brutal, pulpy and lurid. That sums up the irresistible allure of Killer Joe – provided, that is, you find deep-fried perversity to be irresistible. The second collaboration between director William Friedkin and writer Tracy Letts (their first being 2006’s Bug) serves up trailer-trash noir as savage as it is savagely funny. You will be forgiven…

  • The Tree of Life (2011)

    Not many pictures are so flat-out ballsy as to interrupt its principal narrative in order to reveal the origin of the cosmos. But Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life does just that. This coming-of-age story is ambitious and audacious, bold and bewildering. It is 2001 with a Texas twang. It is amazing. That doesn’t mean…

  • The Past (2013)

    Asghar Farhadi burst on the international stage with 2011’s Oscar-winning A Separation, but he was making accomplished films in his native Iran well before the rest of the world took notice. Case in point is The Past, a brutally effectivre exploration of domestic crisis. It begins as Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) returns to Paris after four…

  • The Believer (2011)

    The phrase “self-loathing Jew” is rife with provocative and unsettling meaning for Jews. For a people whose shared identity and history is partly tied to having endured persecution and injustice, some Jews might recoil from a sense of victimization that gnaws away at them even while remaining proud of their perseverance. Or maybe I’m wrong.…