Culturopolis

A semi-sinister little film with the eerie, sunlit ambiance of headspace thrillers like Rosemary's Baby or the original The Stepford Wives , Martha Marcy May Marlene presents a young woman trapped between two worlds. Having escaped an insular cult in the Catskills presided over by guitar-strumming head-hippie Patrick (John Hawkes), Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) has sought refuge at her older sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and husband Ted's (Hugh Dancy) vacation home in Connecticut. But even hours away, Martha is haunted by her memories of the cult — and a feeling that its members...

Melancholia opens with one of life’s most joyous occasions: a wedding. The doll-like, delicate Justine (Kirsten Dunst) has just married a handsome, adoring husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgard). The pair hold court at a lavish wedding reception bathed in opulent golden light in the upscale resort home of Justine’s sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her husband John (Kiefer Sutherland). But despite the jubilant mood, Justine seems more a bystander than participant in the party, slipping away to take a bath and to search for her equally distracted mother Gaby (Charlotte Rampling) and father Dexter (John Hurt), clearly hoping to confide in them. As the evening spirals into disaster and Justine falls into inescapable despair, she has sex with a young party guest and tells off her boss Jack (Stellan Skarsgard). Despite all of Claire’s ministrations and efforts to head off the looming cataclysm, Justine is deep in the throes of a profound, crushing, ruinous depressi...

In addition to evidence that J. Edgar Hoover was gay, a cross-dresser, a conspiracy nut, and a Red-hater, in the engrossing new biopic J. Edgar, director Clint Eastwood contends that the notorious G-man and founder of the Federal Bureau of Investigations was also a major nerd. A fascinating portrait of an influential American, J . Edgar presents Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) as a flawed but prescient figure whose public role building the FBI into an important institution is contrasted with a private life as a closeted gay man devoted to his right-hand man Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), who became a devoted soulmate. For the most part, Eastwood tends to soft pedal Hoover's most malicious and damaging acts of wire-tapping and bad behavior, glossing over the fallout of his character assassination. Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black ( Milk ) prefer a more humanizing approach. J. Edgar begins with a gray-haired, dour, heavyset, and aging Hoover di...

The uproarious comedy Cedar Rapids comes from the blushing cinema of embarrassment that gave us Cyrus and The 40 Year Old Virgin . At the film’s center: a 34-year-old sunny geek Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) convinced selling insurance is an expression of god’s love. As heartily as he sells that message, you almost begin to believe it. You don’t know whether to hug him or give him a wedgie. Is Lippe arrested? Baby-fied? Filmmaker Miguel Arteta ( Chuck & Buck , The Good Girl ) doesn’t make any bones about the stunted but poignant status of its orphan hero, who has lost both parents and looks to his boss for nurturing. Lippe even has a Mrs. Robinson, the over-age hottie Macy Vaderhei (Sigourney Weaver) who, wait for it — used to be his seventh-grade teacher. Can you say m...

There is something innately fascinating about hidden worlds: the subway tunnels that underlie cities; the phosphorescent creatures lurking in the ocean's sunless depths; the insular subcultures of bikers and circus folk. New Orleans photographer Lisette de Boisblanc's photos in Taken by the Fog at Jennifer Schwartz Gallery (which moves to the Westside this month) document a hidden world, too, one that serves as a metaphor for the similar intangibles that lurk inside our own flesh casings. Something between a photographer and a scientist (in fact, the artist once worked in science), de Boisblanc has X-rayed a bevy of her grandmother's dolls against an inky black background. The images bear a distinct resemblance to Man Ray...

Recently nominated for an Academy Award in the Foreign Language category and winner of the Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival, the dark, kinky Greek psychological drama Dogtooth bypassed Atlanta on its tour of big city art houses. Heralded by smart critics across the country, this film is now accessible via Netflix and Amazon in your own home, probably the best place to experience the skin-crawling excesses of this creepy gem with special relevance to artists interested in its critique of patriarchy, government, family, and the highly subjective, easily shaped notion of “reality.” A prolonged shout-out to the power of nurture over nature, Dogtooth centers on a Greek businessmen and father (Christos Stergioglou) who lives with his family in an Edenic, gated compound of green lawns and swaying palm trees in an unidentified rural section of Greece. The father has created his own disturbingly self-defined utopia inside. Behind the wall that encircles his f...

We’re so enamored with the love story, with its promise of happy endings and the sunny side of life, that watching a film about the dissolution of a marriage triggers deep feelings of loss and sadness. Blue Valentine is a difficult, heartbreaking film, but it’s also essential viewing if only for offering a corrective to all of the tales of blissful, uncomplicate...