Reviews

The Fighter is quite good. There aren't all that many surprises here, and those of us who ♥ed David O. Russel's out-there Huckabees will be a little disappointed by its safeness, but it is definitely good. Quite good, even.

The film's obvious standout is Christian Bale as Dicky, demonstrating his range and relevance as an affable, crack-addicted former fighter. Mark Wahlberg plays Dicky's still-fighting brother with unending restraint; he scores points for subtlety in the film's familial drama while losing as many in his charmless, unsmiling romance with Amy Adams's Charlene. There is exactly as much here as is necessary to make the film's finale engaging and rewarding, but very little to remember afterward--it really is quite successful in its predictable underdog ambitions, but it never really aims any higher.

All things considered, the Fighter is almost exactly the lackluster triumph implied in its generic title and trailer--it doesn't reinvent the sport underdog story, but it isn't trying to. This movie only aims to be a quite good entry in its admittedly overaccessable genre; in that it succeeds entirely.

In 1928, Charlie Chaplin wowed audiences by appearing on screen with a real, live lion for his celebrated film The Circus. A lion! Real! On screen! Audiences were mesmerized by this fascinating new art of cinema, an art made all the more engaging for the fact that the plastics of its image had roots in reality; that somewhere else in space and time, Chaplin had actually stood next to this lion and the reality of this image was now available to them for their own viewing pleasure.

For a contemporary equivalent, I give you Steve-O launched through the stratosphere in a PortaPotty full of dog poop. In 3D.

Jackass 3D appeals to cinema's time-honored capacity for ontological testament, and makes an equally compelling case for the camera's potency as an empathy machine: We see the setup of a stunt, we endure its execution, and we then either clutch our balls or puke in our mouths, depending on what the stunt entails. Cinema is reality, and their pain is ours.

Jackass isn't simply effective in the art of its performers, however, as there is a genius to the framing and editing of each segment as well. Many of the film's laughs are built in to its premises, and the crew smartly eschews over-explanation. We see a tee ball, we see the path this ball is on track to take, and we see Steve-O's nuts--as an intelligent and discerning audience, it is left to us to piece together the narrative before it unfolds, resulting in our increased engagement and a far greater potential for humor upon realization. And we then hang in that moment of anticipation, until the situation's potential energy is quickly and cathartically rendered kinetic.

Jackass 3D is notable as well for its use of stereoscopic 3D cinematography. In one scene, Johnny Knoxville fires a projectile toward the screen in slow motion to great effect: shallow depth of field slowly reveals this item to be a dildo, and 3D reveals the dildo to be humorously close to your face. Elsewhere, stereoscopy is employed in the service of some truly excellent model work; the scene's genuine beauty makes its ultimate subversion all the more effective.

Needless to say, Jackass 3D will not appeal to everyone. But as the film so effectively marries the ontology of outrageous stupidity to so many facets of cinematic expression, it's definitely worth seeing if you think you can stomach it. TK 10/17/10

I recently attended a midnight screening of David Yates's latest Harry Potter film with my younger sister and her friend, both girls age 11. The two sat enraptured throughout, and walked out of the theater with a nearly full tub of popcorn. "Hmm," said the friend, looking at how little she'd eaten, "I guess that wasn't really a popcorn movie." She said a mouthful there.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is worlds away from Chris Columbus's charming children's films, both in tone and impact. Where the series began in light ooh-look-at-that fantasy, it now accepts the wizarding world as established and takes its stories and subjects seriously. This means that those uninitiated will likely be very confused, but who cares. Deathly Hallows 1 exists as a bridge between the six films proceeding it and the one to come; there is perhaps limited narrative potential in that purpose, but there's plenty of room for character, exposition, and style.

These three functions offer mixed returns. In terms of character, I do feel that any realistic appraisal of the film must acknowledge a certain amount of sketchy dialog and strained conversational rhythm. This can occasionally be distracting, particularly as the three protagonists' interactions dominate the film's second act. The best developments on the character front come in Hallows's subtler moments; Emma Watson's Hermione is afforded a heartbreaking opening only alluded to in the source material, and Yates allows Rupert Grint's Ron to carry much of his performance in sustained emotional gazes.

In terms of laying out exposition for the series finale, Hallows delivers about as well as it can. As I was already familiar with J.K. Rowling's novels, I can't be entirely sure how understandable this will all be for the film-only crowd; some things are intentionally not yet explained, others may simply be unclear--I knew what was going on so I can only speculate. One block of exposition that I had been dreading actually turned out to be a highlight: the story of the Three Brothers is accompanied by a lucid sequence of stylish animation; it offers effective visual interest without disrupting the film's tone.

In fact, it is in the film's style that it truly exceeds expectations. Yates, as mentioned earlier, takes this story seriously and photographs it as such. The film's effects are rarely ostentatious, and when they do tend toward spectacle, the grandiosity is earned from Hallows's quieter passages. Yates mostly commands the camera as a tool of framing and focus, which lends the film a maturity of form to match its more mature content.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 will please its fans and most likely baffle everyone else, but whether one is familiar with the books, the films, both or neither, this is a solid, serious, and stylish entry in the series. Its effectiveness will be best judged when Part 2 arrives to ideally validate the work done here, but until then this film exists as an unexpectedly compelling placeholder. To those in it for long hall, Part 1 comes highly recommended--just don't expect to eat much popcorn. -TK 11/19/10

Objectivity is never easy, but in judging Toy Story 3, it's an almost entirely pointless aspiration. I got my Woody and Buzz toys when I was six. I had those stylized clouds from Andy's room on my wallpaper. I was choking up when "You've Got a Friend in Me" started playing over the film's achingly nostalgic VHS opening.

I could try and share my overwhelmingly positive and occasionally negative observations--the breakout scene pops with Chaplinesque inventiveness, while Jessie is a tad underserved by the screenplay etc--but for me, Toy Story 3 is defined by the fact that I was streaming tears literally non- stop for the last twenty minutes or so. If you occupy a similar space of hopeless subjectivity, Toy Story 3 will be one of the most moving and rewarding cinematic experiences of the year. -TK 11/16/10

Just as expected, Hard Eight is most interesting as a document of young Paul Thomas Anderson finding his footing. Anderson's style is well developed; the film is full of subtle, effective camera movement and he constructs a fully realized world both in and out of the frame. The writing is a bit more problematic: Hard Eight lacks the personal/political weight of his later material, and Sydney is really a bit racist--why parking lot security, man? The material is elevated by a commanding performance from Philip Baker Hall, but it's most interesting as a precursor to Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood... holy sh*t that's a filmography. Watch those first. -TK 11/16/10

From the vantage point of film 2010, Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas plays as a darker, more intelligent, and significantly funnier version of hit comedy The Hangover; the difference, besides quality, being that Fear and Loathing recognizes its protagonists' exploits as ultimately somewhat pathetic. The film is saturated with canted angles and American flags, in service of a point that the Hangover only touched on through meta-accident: if Vegas is the American dream, what we value as a people is strangely skewed. Johnny Depp gives a superbly bizarre performance, and the material lends itself well to the most surreal elements of Terry Gilliam's style. Fear and Loathing entertainingly indulges excess after excess, but it crucially maintains awareness of itself--it makes a statement without ever compromising its hilarity. -TK 11/16/10

Todd Haynes's Safe is married to its era's increased awareness of plastic toxicity: where the world had once embraced plastics as miraculous new wondersubstance, its environmental implications were at last coming to the forefront. There is tension, however, in the toxicity of plastic's chemical origins and the sterility promised in its final form: overwhelmed by the omnipresence of invisible chemical fumes, protagonist Carol White finds refuge in a plastic oxygen mask. The irony of her reliance on plastics mirrors her relationship to larger systems of oppression in the film: in escaping her claustrophobically prescriptive suburban life, she finds even greater claustrophobia and restriction on her anti-chemical reservation; she must strain herself to find the new environment any sort of improvement. The film offers a clever commentary on our relationship to the social systems above us, and comes recommended in spite of its occasional intentional dullness. –TK 11/11/10

Though Todd Haynes's Superstar is certainly a Karen Carpenter story, it is just as much a story of values-oriented America, perfectly captured in an American icon: the Barbie doll. Superstar tells the story of Karen Carpenter's struggle with anorexia by puppeting Barbies and Kens to represent all of the film's central characters. It is notable for its necessarily unusual visual style and varied disruptions of narrative, but I was most taken with the compellingly complex relationship that each of the film's three central icons--Carpenter, America, Barbie--all have with their own central ironies.

Although there is a clear tension between surface appeal and sinister social implication in the above subjects of Superstar, their dualities don't corrupt their dual natures toward compromised unity so much as they feed both natures individually and independently: in spite of Carpenter's stress and anorexia, her earnestness and purity of intention are played as 100% real; whatever problematic femininity Barbie embodies, she is still sold as a genuine model of perfection; whatever clusterf*** of societal ills America may be--the film at one point explicitly invokes Watergate, citing Nixon as an avid Carpenter fan--the country keeps unceasingly God- blessing itself.

It is noteworthy as well that these icons don't necessarily lack self- awareness--Carpenter tries to address her anorexia, Barbie caves to some new criticism every five years or so--but that they forge ahead ignoring the fact that they are complex and imperfect entities; they maintain identities of apparent perfection while fostering dark realities, ignoring their irony in spite of their awareness.

These are not winking ironies, they are not overtly clever or stylish ironies, they are the ironies of compellingly and frighteningly sequestered schemas. Todd Haynes recognizes the strange tension of earnestness and irony in Carpenter/Barbie/America, and smartly avoids winking or nudging in the style of his film. Superstar's Barbie as Carpenter premise is certainly clever, but it is not simply an exercise in cleverness: it is a surprisingly but appropriately genuine exploration of its subjects' complexities, and it is worth the considerable trouble required to see it. -TK 11/7/10

If your kids like this film, IMDb recommends Fellini's 8½! Yeah, this one's weirder than you thought.

The Three Caballeros is essentially a barely narrative series of experimental animated shorts, starting in nature film parody, progressing to a couple of early live-action/animation hybrids, and ending in a lustful interspecies psychedelic freakout--needless to say, it's an influential film. You might have to gag through some touristy Latinisms, but there's some prime Disney surrealism waiting for you if you do.

-TK 11/2/10

Memory: unforgivably stupid plot, nonsensical action and motivations, terrible performances from everyone but Dennis Hopper, male "characters" are defined by alcohol and sex obsession + vague, cartoonish nobility, female characters have no attributes, music is cheap and overbearing, editing is distractingly shoddy, much of the action is literally the lead character reading exposition aloud to himself, and it's never at all thrilling. There's a very small amount of stupid fun in the film's preposterous conclusion, but all things considered, Memory isn't really worthy of complete sentences. -TK 10/31/10

The public typically assumes that the MPAA, responsible for rating all widely distributed films, is a sensible, lawful governmental agency accountable to consistent standards; a necessary, helpful avenue for informing parents and consumers. According to Kirby Dick's 2006 documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, we're wrong on every count.

This Film primarily focuses on the line between an R rating and an NC-17, positing that the difference between the two is more a matter of politics than fostering parental awareness. R-rated films are distributed widely, NC-17 films are not--the harsher rating is typically given to independent art-house fare, dependent more on tone than content. The MPAA--owned and operated by major studios--not only discourages but disallows any appeals to precedent, and cloaks its members in anonymity. Kirby's film gets a bit silly in its animated and investigative segments, but it comes solidly recommended for its content--the politics of distribution affect any serious film-goer, and the better informed we are the better. -TK 10/30/10

The Second Awakening of Christa Kalges is a great little film about the practical and moral implications of a righteous rebellion. The film is set against the aftermath of a bank robbery perpetrated by three well-meaning people trying to fund a kindergarten--a compelling premise well-executed. The female leads all do solid work, and the writing is subtle and intelligent, slowly revealing the ethical and emotional triggers behind the robbery. Our characters face difficulty not only in avoiding arrest but in routing the money to its proper place; a realistic view of the difficulty inherent in upsetting our systems, no matter how noble one's intentions. Ultimately though, the film is truthful not only in its realist pessimism but in the potential it illustrates for optimism as well: informed, compassionate individuals can unravel the punishing forces above us so long as we recognize our agency and choose not to participate. For its writing, its characters, and above all its ideas, The Second Awakening of Christa Kalges comes recommended highly. -TK 10/18/10

Kimberly Reed was understandably nervous about coming home to her small Montana town. She had grown up as Paul McKerrow: high school quarterback, popular scholar, handsome and well-respected male. She then left this life behind to realize her identity as female, and was now returning for a class reunion--the first time her childhood friends would know her as a woman. Armed with a camera, supported by her girlfriend, and braced for an onslaught of transphobia, Reed plunged in.

And then nothing really happened. A few explanations were in order for a few bemused guests, but the vast majority of Reed's small town Montana classmates were perfectly cordial and accepting. Thus begins Reed's 2008 documentary Prodigal Sons.

Although Reed's homecoming is disappointingly lacking in narrative interest, Reed finds plenty of documentable conflict in her estranged brother Marc, who lost part of his brain in a car crash and is now mentally unstable. Reed films herself asking Marc for fashion advice and alternately encouraging/discouraging Marc's childhood reminiscence; Marc is seen trying to be accommodating in spite of his obvious discomfort. Until his mood swings hit and he becomes a total jackass--though even then, he's more concerned with Kim's high school adoration than her status as a woman.

So goes the film: Kimberly either expects or invites opposition to her gender and receives none; Marc deals with a crippling mental disorder, alienates everybody, and plunges into paranoia and despair. While both stories are compelling in their own right, they do not compliment each other. Reed's primary misstep is to give her own story as much weight as Marc's: I have no doubt that Reed has overcome a great deal of hardship in her transition, but her struggle is told rather than shown. What is shown is a sad, jealous man losing his mind--the plight of stable, well-adjusted, transsexual Reed seems terribly bourgeois in comparison.

Ultimately, this particular work of transgender cinema would be quite a bit more effective if it were a little bit less concerned with its status as such. Reed obviously hoped for a reconciliatory homecoming story--see title--but what she got was the sad deterioration of her still-jealous-about-high-school brother. If she'd had the discipline to tell his story rather than hers, she'd have a better film for it. -TK 10/23/10

The Gleaners and I is odd in that it hardly feels like a proper film at all: it's shot on visibly cheap MiniDV, its editing is consistently unpolished, and it delights in crossing the line from personal to indulgent in excess. It's obvious that these are all deliberate choices; the question is, would we care if it didn't have the name Agnès Varda on it?

Ultimately, the film's amateurish style is somewhat deceptive: Varda demonstrates her talent for finding significance in the mundane, and strikes a number of compelling parallels in her examination of scavenger culture. The film does tend to coast on Varda's legendary new wave status at times, particularly as we linger on interviews and segments only tenuously related to the film's subject, but it's interesting as an example of a living legend embracing her medium's democratization: for all the good and bad it implies, she blends in seamlessly with the millions of talented people who own camcorders. -TK 10/21/10

When Joss Whedon's internet project Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was conceived during the 2008 writers strike and released independently to the internet, it in many ways represented old media venturing into the new. Whedon's team of established television writers and actors built on old media genre tropes of musicals and superheroes, but mixed in contemporary segmentation and a healthy dose of self-awareness for these savvy new internet viewers. The result is something that might be more at home in Whedon's world of fringe television and film; it doesn't exactly capture this wacky internet zeitgeist, but it does do a passable imitation and parody of it.

Neil Patrick Harris demonstrates some truly impressive singing chops as the titular doctor; his nerdy charisma propels the project throughout. Nathan Fillion is also great as the hilariously dickish Captain Hammer; he single-handedly provides nearly all of the project's laughs. Dr. Horrible falters when it skews too overtly jokey, but its clever songs and excellent cast make it a worthy addition the burgeoning new media canon, though most notably as the old media's first major entry in it. - TK 10/20/10

Sally Potter's Orlando is a clever and ambitious dissection of love and gender that defies culturally sexed expectations in both content and form. The film owes much of its narrative experimentalism to Virginia Woolf, who first conceived the story of immortal, androgynous Orlando as an exploration of societal prejudice and conduct, satirizing naively patriarchal feelings of romantic ownership and the laughably self- important status of masculine art. Potter deserves credit, however, for translating the story into a Brechtian subversion of traditional viewership modes: the film's drag casting, fourth wall disruption, titles and music all remind us to be conscious and critical of how we engage the film. Orlando is anchored by a charming performance from Tilda Swinton, and some stunning costume and set design. It is a smart film that challenges the sexed gaze, and it genuinely earns the sense of hope it ends on. -TK 10/12/10

Any work of art this preposterously boring can only be considered a failure. Yup, we're going there.

Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is 201 minutes of three days in the life of its titular heroine, played intentionally blank by Delphine Seyrig. That's a run time of about three and a half hours--time Akerman spends following Seyrig's Dielman around doing errands, cooking food, watching a neighbor's baby, sitting around, doing some sex work, and caring for her young adult son. Yeah, sex work is the odd one.

The film deserves credit for depicting her sex work as a clean and unsensationalized expression of self-ownership--until of course it throws that all away in the film's stupid sex-is-death conclusion and squanders the only good will it had earned with me. Dielman's relationship with her son is wrapped up in a lot of dated Freudian BS, and rings utterly hollow to those of us living beyond the 1970s. That leaves a whole lot of boring stuff, and that stuff is a whole lot of boring.

The bulk of this film consists of a static camera watching a woman do housework. It's like the much-lauded maid scene of Umberto D, but stretched across three excruciating hours. This is presumably meant to be oppressive and disturbing, and here Akerman crucially misunderstands the effect of her art on its audience: the only possible spectatorial response, so far as I can tell, is supreme disengagement. Just as I daydream when I do housework, so does my mind wander while watching Jeanne Dielman of 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles cook the potatoes. People retreat to their thoughts when they do this stuff in real life, and they retreat when you faithfully reproduce it on screen. The film can't possibly engage me politically or emotionally as art if I'm spending the entire run time thinking about whether I get paid this Friday and what I'm going to cook for dinner.

The question is, is Akerman aware of the human proclivity toward idle thought during mundane tasks? Because this film is only oppressive and uncomfortable if it's empty, if this woman doesn't dream then this numbing boredom could have something to say. But that doesn't work: we all think all the time, we all daydream. Does Jeanne Dielman of 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles daydream? Presumably so, but the film is so damned externalized that I have no idea what she's thinking. And without her thoughts to guide me through these three and a half irretrievable hours of my one wild and precious life, I'm left with my own.

As such, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles's conclusion is spectacularly unmotivated and completely unearned. The finale is entirely unsupported by its previous action because this was, for me, a film about what type of sandwich I'll eat when I get home and what's going on this weekend. -TK 10/7/10

Gus Van Sant's Elephant would be a compelling work even if it were about senior center scrap-booking. The film is a testament to nearly every artistic function of the camera--manipulation of time, subtle depth of field contraction, selectively subjective framing and sustained index of reality all saturate the beautifully shot film. But this is not a film about senior center scrap-booking, it is about high school isolation and violence. Elephant's subject matter is disturbing and taboo, and it's tough to say if the film is ever really up to the task of handling it.

For all the time spent following our high school characters, the film devotes very little time to exploring their thoughts or motivations. For the shooting victims, this is a bit wasteful; for the shooters, this is a bit irresponsible. What drives these guys? Is their sexuality a factor in their decisions? If not, what's up with that kiss? If so, what are you saying, Van Sant? And that last explicit on screen casualty... where the hell did that come from, and where does it fit?

We're left with these and other questions. I'm open to the idea that that's a good thing, that Elephant exists to plant these questions of motivation lest we write them off in real life. But I do think that the film's emotional impact and ultimate relevance are undermined by the film's underdevelopment, particularly since the background that we are given falls safely within established scapegoat territory of sexual rejection and violent video games.

I don't ask that Elephant give me some easy prescriptive social policy, but I do ask that it justify its existence by challenging me; these characters aren't developed enough, and their motivations are either too simple or too little explored to offer a challenge. This film is tough, it's dark, it has some of the most beautiful cinematography you'll ever see. But to what end? -TK 10/3/10

Let's start with the script. It's great. Written by soon-to-be-best- adapted-screenplay-nominee/winner Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network's writing is intelligent and demanding on multiple levels: most obviously, the story is cleverly structured across dual lawsuits, but there's an equal amount of sophistication to Sorkin's character work--Zuckerberg is never quite capable of maintaining a dialog, Eduardo always stops just short of explicating his emotions.

Those two characters are wonderfully played by inevitable acting award nominees Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield--Eisenberg owns the brisk pace of the film while Garfield brings most of the humanity--who anchor a terrific ensemble--SAG best ensemble, perhaps? The film's score is a perfectly atmospheric concoction of electronica from edgy dark horse best original score nominees Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and it's all united under the name and vision of David Fincher, who did not win an Oscar for Fight Club or Zodiac or Benjamin Button.

All of this is to say two things: this is a really great movie from a phenomenal creative team, and also there are times when the film feels somewhat calculated for accolades--never in the repugnantly safe, crowd- pleasing, middle-brow Benjamin Button sense, but in the sweetly transparent sense of a kid who did all his chores and is suggesting that he might deserve a cookie.

You know what? Give David Fincher a cookie. The Social Network is thoroughly intelligent and engaging as a modern biopic and as an examination of evolving cultural currency, and it's also one of my favorite films this year. -TK 10/1/10

It's tough to sort my feelings on Daughters of the Dust. The film is built around a compelling and often forgotten segment of black history that maintains social resonance beyond its time and place; director Julie Dash deserves credit for capturing the emotion and pain of cultural transformation, and there are lovely images throughout. But Daughters of the Dust makes very little effort to engage the audience: it's difficult to maintain a sense of each character's individual goals, and the film often sacrifices narrative momentum for visual poetry. Unfortunately, I'm left with a film that interests me more in theory than in practice. -TK 9/30/10

Jaques Demy's Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a relentlessly colorful and jazzy screen opera set against the backdrop of France's Algerian War in which literally every line of dialog is sung. This non-stop musicality is often fun and funny, particularly in the context of our blue-collar protagonist's gas station job: checking oil and taking extra shifts seems positively joyous when rendered in swing music; it almost seems as if this film was made to pacify the French proletariat. That joy is short-lived, however, and as the plot shifts into the two leads' endlessly repetitive romantic introspection, Cherbourg begins to drag.

Without any musical down time, I found myself becoming acclimated to the ceaseless music, and by the half-way point wasn't really conscious of it; unfortunately, the story is pretty boring once that happens. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg's extreme take on the musical is what makes it notable, but it also negates the musical's usual magic of a song's beginning and ending; it's an interesting experiment, but not an entirely successful one. -TK 9/28/10

Catfish is an engrossing documentary in two distinct acts: clever dissection of personality circa 2010, and heartbreaking portrait of disappointment and compromise. The less said about either element the better, suffice to say that it mostly succeeds in all of its contradictory ambitions.

The film is ostensibly made up on the fly, which speaks to its fractured tone and ever-evolving intentions. This is not to say that the film lacks in story-telling; the action unfolds lucidly and is cleverly unified through footage of Google Earth and Facebook. The limited perspective of the camera combined with the seeming omniscience of the internet is a compelling pairing, and lends itself quite aptly to the film's central questions of to what extent you can ever know or love another person.

Some will find Catfish's conclusion tasteless, perhaps even morally questionable. I happen to think it's damn good film. Art strives to convey truth, and this finale is loaded with it--sad, hard, beautiful truth. How fortunate that the Catfish team happened to stumble upon it in reality. -TK 9/23/10

As Laura Mulvey's lasting legacy has been her theorization of a feminist avant-garde that eschews visual pleasure, it's hardly surprising that her famous 1977 experiment Riddles of the Sphinx is a bit difficult to digest. I certainly had a hard time watching it. But even though the film consistently tried my attention and nerves, I cannot deny that it's a wholly original work. And the more I think about it, the more I respect it, and the more--this is a bit crazy--the more I think I might like to watch it again.

The most immediately intriguing stylistic component is the slow, rotating cinematography of the film's fourth chapter. By placing a camera in an environment and confining it to a mechanical 360 degree rotation, Mulvey and Wollen offer a deliberate point of view that maintains visual interest without conforming to any traditional understanding of the filmic "gaze." This technique is most effectively employed in a scene that takes place in moving traffic, to a distinctly Children of Menesque effect; its a compelling demonstration of the spectatorial pleasure to be derived from cinematic skill as opposed to voyeurism and scopophilia.

Elsewhere, Mulvey and Wollen continue to push the boundaries of how we engage with cinema--I can say truthfully that I was far more invested in seeing two water drops reach the end of a maze than I would have been in characters chasing MacGuffins. I can't promise that you'll enjoy Riddles of the Sphinx in any traditional sense, but I can wholeheartedly recommend it to any filmmakers or artists interested in exploring new forms of expression. -TK 9/23/10

Louis C.K.'s latest comedy concert film is Hilarious, the first ever stand-up documentary to be accepted at Sundance. The film is economically produced--C.K. does his own direction and editing--and spends much of its time in a mid shot of C.K.'s face; content is everything here.

Whatever its personal implications, C.K.'s recent divorce is a great development for his comedy: it allows him to take his trademark pessimism on dates, to the gym, and even to the club. He pares incredulous contempt for beautiful people with his own healthy self-loathing--but because this is Louis C.K, he absolutely never pities himself. In fact, many of his best barbs are aimed at the entitled and ungrateful among us: among other great jabs, this film contains his now-famous "chair in the sky" airplane routine.

Much of his best and most human material is derived from life as a father; he invokes his daughters with a disarming love and respect, while realistically explicating the more disgusting elements of parenthood. This too benefits from his recent divorce, as it serves to alienate him even further from contemporary dating.

There is also a fair number of shock laughs, of course--at one point C.K tellingly acknowledges that upsetting people makes him laugh. And that in itself is the great appeal of Louis C.K.'s comedy, that we can bond over the idea that nothing good will ever happen to anyone and then find humor in it. Hilarious is all about finding laughs in pessimism, and it demonstrates what a hilarious performer C.K. is. -TK 9/22/10