In this Time Richard Corliss piece about the battle between celluloid and digital photography, director Michael Mann (Collateral, Heat) argues that digital is “capable of a chromatic subtlety that film can’t match.” Collateral, Mann claims, was “the first photo-real use of digital…[and] in the nightscapes in Collateral, you’re seeing buildings a mile away. You’re seeing … Read more
Time‘s Richard Corliss on the great Terrence Howard: “He exudes a charismatic musk as DJay, the pimp-turned-rapper in the indie film Hustle & Flow. Those soft eyes, the feline athleticism, a voice that can caress subtlety into any dialogue — viewers get a taste of that, and in a minute they say, ‘This guy’s a … Read more
Time‘s Richard Corliss writes that a generic Ralph Fiennes performance — and particularly the very fine one he gives in The Constant Gardener (Focus Features, 8.31)– “is a miniature device with intricate moving parts. Movie directors often want their actors to ‘go bigger.’ Fiennes goes smaller — and inside. His onscreen speech is a mix … Read more
Time‘s Richard Corliss has declared that Closer (Columbia, 12.3) “runs counter to the numbing predictability of most current films: the inevitable plot points of revenge and uplift, the reduction of human beings to heroes and villains, the avoidance of complexity in sexual matters.” And director Mike Nicohols observes in the same piece, “I thought we … Read more
Old-school, classic-era film critic Richard Corliss, one of the brightest, sharpest and most highly regarded film seers and scholars of the late 20th Century and early aughts, a guy whose opinions caused shifts in the tectonic plates of Hollywood commerce during his Time days of the ’80s and ’90s, died last night from a stroke. … Read more
“By standards of quality, the DGA’s choice of Tom Hooper, director of The King’s Speech, over The Social Network‘s David Fincher is indefensible,” writes Time‘s Richard Corliss. “Hooper manages his principal players (Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter) expertly enough but forces the supporting actors into caricature. His camera style is stodgy, and his … Read more
The main point in a 4.6 piece about the just-deceased Jules Dassin by Time‘s Richard Corliss is that aside from his reputation as the father of the sophisticated heist film, he was a gifted but not exceptionally talented in-and-outer who lived through a 40-year dry spell after his last big hit, Topkapi, in 1964. That’s … Read more
“It’s an odd thing, but in recent years, just about every movie that attempts a sophisticated take on romance, has turned out to be strained and witless. All the successful recent comedies (The 40 Year Old Virgin, The Wedding Crashers and Knocked Up, to name three) have tended toward the raunchy end of the spectrum. … Read more
In a capsule review, Time critic Richard Corliss — usually a fairly adventurous sort and certainly no rigid conservative — has slammed Paul Thomas Anderson‘s There Will Be Blood (Paramount Vantage, 12.26), using terms like “daft” and “deranged zone.” No worries — it’s a solvable issue. Corliss has to see it a second time, is … Read more
With two lines and one fell swoop, Time‘s Richard Corliss has simultaneously given Charlie Wilson’s War a nice pat on the back and damned its Oscar chances with faint praise. Death quote #1: “It could be the one war film people will enjoy seeing.” Death quote #2: “Audiences should have a great time watching it.” … Read more
Richard Corliss Darjeeling Limited Venice Film Festival Blast #1 (about the similarities between Owen Wilson and the character he plays): “It’s a shock, but not a surprise, to see Owen Wilson in The Darjeeling Limited, the new semi-comedy from Wes Anderson that premiered at the Venice Film Festival last night.” And a little jarring, he … Read more
Richard Corliss Darjeeling Limited Venice Film Festival Blast #2 (i.e., about the continuing Wes Anderson poised-attitude problem that dogs it): “Picaresque movies often feel longer than they are. For them to work, they need an interior spring with more thrust than Darjeeling Limited‘s attempt at reconstituted brotherhood. The problem is in Anderson’s approach, which is … Read more