Search This Blog

Culturopolis

Cultural coverage for readers with a pulse.

Creative Loafing Articles, 9/13

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

- September 13, 2006

FILM

UNLUCKIEST NUMBER
Welcome to the nightmare world of 13 Tzameti

TO SIR, WITH DRUGS
A teacher with a message -- and an addiction

ART

CHILD OF NATURE
Ruud Van Empel explores an exotic World

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Comments

Teenage Dream: In Young Adult, Charlize Theron Doesn't Want to Grow Up

- December 14, 2011

With the double-whammy combination of Bridesmaids and Young Adult , 2011 is officially the year of the stunted, frustrated girl-misfit. A toxic spin on all of those cutesy chick flicks where career girls yearn for marriage, the latter film is the convention-busting story of semi-slovenly, semi-slatternly 37-year-old Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), who is hellbent on busting up a marriage. Mavis is a woman old enough — the social code goes — to be married and the proud owner of a child (or two). But instead she's floundering in a sea of insecurity when it comes to both love and career. It is an outrageously refreshing change of pace from the priss-pots and put-a-ring-on-it obsessives who constitute the majority of romantic comedies. In a deliciously terse opening sequence, Mavis is introduced waking up in her cluttered Minneapolis high-rise apartment — more dorm room than grown-up pad — in a hungover funk that you sense she's been riding for a long time. A post-divorce bachelo...

The Year in Film (So Far): Exploitation, War and a Brutal Economy in Film and Reality Alike

- December 07, 2020

The global haves and the have nots collide in the brilliant Brazilian nightmare Bacurau A year of difficulty for individuals and also for the film industry, COVID-19 made 2020 a trial by fire for many. But even despite quarantine, incredible films by a variety of talented filmmakers, many of which flew under the radar, have made this a banner year for great filmmaking. It was also a year when smaller, independent or art house fare had a moment to shine, as blockbusters and big Hollywood movies took a back burner and tried to wait out COVID for the moment when theaters opened up. Smaller films, foreign films and works by a new wave of younger female directors were able to shine in the absence of the Hollywood's braying media blitzkreig. Read on for some of my favorite films of 2020 so far, in a year of visual delights still to come. All are currently streaming now on a TV near you. ...

Bully Is a Real-Life Horror Story With Many Monsters

- April 23, 2012

Courtesy Lions Gate Films Bully has every element of a modern horror story. Sympathetic, persecuted victims, sadistic monsters, and even a deceptively banal setting, the sterile cinderblock hallways and asphalt playgrounds are where its tales of terror unfold. The worst thing about this horror movie, however, is that it is all real. This is one of the scariest, clammiest, most skin-crawling films in recent memory, a tale of victims stuck in small, isolated towns where no one hears their cries for help, and their persecutors — both bullies and clueless administrators and figures of authority — are pitiless. Whether you experienced some form of bullying in school or not, the way director Lee Hirsch (in a manner reminiscent of Gus Van Sant's Elephant ) captures the architecture of...