Cinefile

Welcome To Nollywood

On DVD
Aug 31, 2010

Every week, approximately fifty new feature film productions are released to the public in Lagos, Nigeria.  Most films are made with a budget between $5,000 and $15,000. There are no theaters and no DVD players available to the majority of the public. All films go direct to VHS and VCD format.  Despite these micro budgets, currently the industry generates over $280 million (USD) for the Nigerian economy each year.

"Nollywood" is now considered the third largest film industry in the world today. Some estimates state that industry is in-fact larger per capita than Hollywood. In Welcome To Nollywood ...

The Ghost Writer

On DVD
Aug 19, 2010

Roman Polanski is one of the last living masters of filmmaking. From the unmatched vice on paranoia in his Rosemary’s Baby to the controlled sense of somberness in his The Pianist, Polanski has always championed character over cinematic spectacle. His films let the players on the screen dazzle the audience; they’re the movie’s best special effect. Polanski’s The Ghost Writer is one of the year’s very best films and again puts Polanski in top form. The very fact that a key central character in the film is basically excommunicated from his country, runs a potent ...

Brooklyn's Finest

On DVD
Jul 27, 2010

When Antoine Fuqua’s massively successful Training Day debuted in 2001, it announced the end of the 90s hitman movie (e.g. Luc Besson’s The Professional, Fuqua’s own The Replacement Killers) and established the 00s as the era of the rogue cop drama (e.g. Neil LaBute’s Lakeview Terrace, Ron Shelton’s Dark Blue) in American cinema. As the volatile detective Alonzo Harris, Denzel Washington combined bravura and brutality to a performance that tip toed away from silly camp and marched toward Oscar glory. Since Training Day however, Fuqua’s filmography has been filled with tepid attempts ...

A Single Man

On DVD
Jul 20, 2010

Fashion Designer Tom Ford's first entry into the film world, A Single Man, unfurls a lot like an abstract commercial for Chanel, Versace or Armani. There's a distinct obsession in capturing the glamour, the swank and the trim of early '60s California, fusing it with vivid snapshots of life experienced in the moment and life echoing back from the past. The sharp, carefully-crafted images of the film are as much a character as the actors who reside within them. Still, the story never takes a full backseat to the visual splendor – it's far too pronounced to lose ...

Mystery Train

On DVD
Jun 24, 2010

Watching an early Jim Jarmusch film is kind of like rediscovering a long-lost artifact of Americana - an artifact that indicates a time and place which the U.S. once held close to heart. It was a place where pompadours stood tall, R&B and rockabilly breathed life into music, and leather-clad greasers stood slanted and smoking on corners. Even if the reality of that time has been over-glorified, Jarmusch turns it into a well-tempered obsession.

The writer/director embraces this little corner of pop culture; however, he is careful not to drown his films in the memorabilia of the past ...

The Road

On DVD
May 30, 2010

Earlier this year, I wrote a DVD review of the silly apocalyptic film 2012, highlighting its key role in “depleting our intellect.”  That film relied on wall-to-wall CGI and mindless pandemonium. Director John Hillcoat’s The Road, on the other hand, is the antithesis to such Hollywood fodder. It’s an end-of-the-world picture that avoids cliché spectacle in exchange for hard-to-come-by character introspection. The fact that it’s an adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel is a bold gesture indeed, seeing that McCarthy’s prose is a rare entity; it is profoundly clear and yet nearly impossible to articulate on ...