Tag: 2009

  • A Serious Man (2009)

    Larry Gopnik, the mild-mannered protagonist of Joel and Ethan Coens’ A Serious Man, is in a doozy of an existential crisis. His wife is leaving him for another man. He is being financially and psychologically squeezed by his self-absorbed children. And just as this college physics professor is on the cusp of receiving tenure, Larry’s…

  • Coraline (2009)

    Picasso mused that every child is born an artist, but that the hard part is how to remain one after they grow up. Nothing is more surreal or vivid than the imagination of a child, where even the most seemingly mundane experience can evoke stark fear or unbridled joy. It’s a frontier ripe for storytellers,…

  • (500) Days of Summer (2009)

    Romantic comedies can be as propagandistic as any jingoistic World War II-era flag-waver, playing in the sandbox of audiences’ lovesick fantasies while paying only lip service to the messy reality of relationships. That’s why you have to admire a picture as cheerfully impish as (500) Days of Summer and the zeal with which it both…

  • Chloe (2009)

    Chloe wants to be an erotic thriller. At least, that’s what I think it aims to be. It’s difficult to know for sure, what with its eroticism steeped in so much fussy pretensions. The movie is particularly disappointing coming from Atom Egoyan, the director behind the critically acclaimed Exotica (1994) and The Sweet Hereafter (1997).…

  • Sin Nombre (2009)

    The directorial debut of Cary Joji Fukunaga, Sin Nombre, is an early demonstration of the filmmaker’s gifts, revealing a lyricism and visual style that elevate the material well beyond melodrama. The Spanish-language film interweaves the stories of two young people who eventually cross paths. In Chiapas, Mexico, Casper (Edgar Flores) is not your typical hood.…

  • Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (2009)

    By the late 2000s, vampire was the new black. Between the popularity of the Twilight franchise and HBO’s True Blood, bloodsucking hadn’t been this lucky since the Wall Street bailout. … Which brings us to another vampire-centric tale, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant. Truncating the first three novels of Darren Shan’s YA book series,…