Ella Taylor

Greta Gerwig, Blithely Spirited As 'Frances Ha'

Ella Taylor — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:03:00 +0000

Long a darling of the New York indie scene, Noah Baumbach came to filmmaking with a solid pedigree: His father is a film theorist and his mother was a movie critic at the Village Voice (where I've contributed myself).

But after his first hit comedy, Kicking and Screaming, the writer-director developed a habit not uncommon among novice filmmakers: He mistook clever disdain for insight.

'Venus and Serena': Champs Atop Their Game

Ella Taylor — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:54:00 +0000

What's left to know about Venus and Serena Williams? Probably not much that the tennis titans would be willing to share, given how heavily exposed they've been already, and how eager the press has been to wedge the sisters into ready-made narratives about race, celebrity and the daughters of a Svengali.

The lively if slightly worshipful new documentary Venus and Serena breaks little new ground in this regard.

'Love Is All You Need,' Unless Character Matters

Ella Taylor — Thu, 02 May 2013 21:03:00 +0000

When a husband steps out on his wife while she's getting chemo, she's entitled to a weekend in the Mediterranean with Pierce Brosnan, right?

Right, but I believe he went there quite recently with Meryl Streep, did he not, albeit without the cancer? I didn't much care for Mamma Mia!, but the garish musical at least embraced its vulgarity with a full heart and a toe-tapping ABBA soundtrack.

Between Two Worlds, A 'Reluctant Fundamentalist'

Ella Taylor — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:03:00 +0000

Coming as it does amid intense public debate about the alienation of immigrants in America, the release of Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist is both timely and slightly eerie.

The movie, based on a well-received novel by Mohsin Hamid, charts the political and spiritual journey of Changez, a driven young Pakistani who arrives in New York determined to succeed, American-style.

As new immigrants go, Changez — played by charismatic British actor-rapper Riz Ahmed, who has liquid black eyes and a soulful stare that gets right under your skin — is unusually privileged.

'At Any Price': What Cost A Win?

Ella Taylor — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:59:00 +0000

Like last year's fracking drama Promised Land, the new movie At Any Price is about farm people getting pushed around by corporations — except that there's no Matt Damon to rescue them, cleanse his soul and snag Rosemarie DeWitt in the bargain.

Indie director Ramin Bahrani's first Hollywood picture is far from a David-and-Goliath story, though, and it's certainly not The Waltons Face Down Monsanto.

A 'House' Divided, Over Stories Lived And Told

Ella Taylor — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:23:00 +0000

Among the semi-literate journals submitted by his high-school students, jaded French literature teacher Germain (Fabrice Luchini) is jazzed to find a rough diamond from a new pupil, Claude (Ernst Umhauer).

In weekly installments, the ingratiating but enigmatic teenager, who looks as though he just stepped out of a Pasolini movie, chronicles his efforts to insinuate himself into the family of one his classmates, an amiable but awkward underachiever named Rapha (Bastien Ughetto).

Recognizing a potential talent, Germain, a failed novelist and champion of the classics, begins to nurture the bo

A Class-Concious Romp With 'The Angels' Share' Of Charm

Ella Taylor — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:03:00 +0000

Responding to the death of Margaret Thatcher earlier this week, film director Ken Loach told The Guardian: "Mass unemployment, factory closures, communities destroyed — this is her legacy. She was a fighter, and her enemy was the British working class."

Loach speaks from experience: He began his tireless chronicling of the plight of Britain's underclass long before Thatcher came to power, and he didn't go much easier on Labour governments before or after her tenure as a Tory prime minister.

'Before And After' Dinner, Andre Is Still Talking

Ella Taylor — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 21:03:00 +0000

In 1981, avant-garde theater director Andre Gregory collaborated with his friend Wallace Shawn and French filmmaker Louis Malle on an oddball project they called My Dinner with Andre.

Now enshrined as a classic — and one of the most-lampooned films in the history of American cinema — the movie is a talky two-hander in which Gregory (or someone very like him) gassed away about his globe-trotting adventures in spiritual enlightenment, while Shawn (or someone very like him) listened in disbelief, then grew entranced.

Public response tended to divide between those who thought My D

Past Pains, Buried Deep 'Down The Shore'

Ella Taylor — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 21:03:00 +0000
If you want to tell a story, the professional tale-spinners say, make something happen.
That's true, but a happening can be defined as elastically as the teller needs it to be. Sometimes it's a shift in a character's inner landscape — a change in her responses to the common hurts and losses that she's lugged around from childhood — that moves us more than a third-act gunshot ever could.
Down the Shore, a modestly scaled independent film set on the Jersey Shore, is billed as a thriller.

An 'Admission' That Moms Might Not Know Best

Ella Taylor — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 21:08:00 +0000
Half an hour into Paul Weitz's new comedy, Admission, it dawned on me that I was watching an Americanized About a Boy -- which admittedly was also directed by Weitz. Both movies are adapted from other people's novels; both cobble together families out of the waifs and strays of modern life.
But where About a Boy was both funny and wise about urban alienation, Admission settles for skin deep.
Admission's plot hovers in the vicinity of two square-peg boys. One is small, black, adopted from Uganda and yearning for a normal life.

Whatever Happened To The Real Gingers And Rosas?

Ella Taylor — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:33:00 +0000
A few weeks ago, I asked a class of college undergraduates what the 1960s meant to them.
"That flower-power thing?" one young man volunteered brightly.
The further we get from that misunderstood decade, the more the many strands of its rebelliousness get reduced to a pop-culture T-shirt slogan, a cartoon strip starring tie-dyed youth with stoned eyes and floor-mop hair.
But in London, where I came of age in the mid-'60s, "that flower-power thing" came late — and, by North American standards, pretty watered down.

'Hava Nagila: The Movie' Pays Homage To Unlikely Jewish Touchstone

Ella Taylor — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 22:03:00 +0000
I grew up on "Hava Nagila," and I'll admit it's not the catchiest of tunes. The ingenuous Hebrew lyrics ("Come!

'Inescapable' Ambiguities In Prewar Syria

Ella Taylor — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:03:00 +0000
It's hard to imagine an upside to the civil war now causing unspeakable suffering in Syria. But the conflict has turned out to be a break for the makers of Inescapable, a feverish political thriller written and directed by Ruba Nadda, a Canadian of Syrian origin whose last film was the languorous 2009 romance Cairo Time.
Set in Damascus in 2011, on the eve of the uprising against President Bashar Assad, the movie minces no words about the brutal police state he has kept in trim since the 2000 death of his father, Hafez Assad.

'Shanghai Calling,' And The Answer Is, 'Why Not?'

Ella Taylor — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 22:03:00 +0000
As Ugly Americans go, Manhattan corporate attorney Sam Chao (Daniel Henney) has a lot going for him. He's a handsome dude with perfectly symmetrical features, a toned bod we get to peek at all but naked, and facile charm to burn.
He also happens to be the son of Chinese immigrants, but he has brushed aside his heritage along with anything else that might get in the way of making partner. So when his bosses suddenly banish Sam to the boondocks — as he sees it — of Shanghai to open a new office for the firm, he complies in a mighty sulk.

'Lore': After Hitler, An Awakening For The Reich's Children

Ella Taylor — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 22:04:00 +0000
It took years for our fictions to consider the Holocaust narrative. And for an even longer time, a stunned silence hovered over the fate of "Hitler's children" — ordinary Germans during and after World War II.