REVIEW: Beneath the Harvest Sky [2014]

“I’ll figure it out” A movie doesn’t always have to be one hundred percent unique to prove effective if those involved propel it above cliché through authenticity. Writer/directors Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly‘s Beneath the Harvest Sky is a prime example, seemingly familiar from frame one and yet still resonate. You have your down-on-its-luck town on the Maine/Canadian border, its thick-as-thieves high school friends (one a bruiser the world dismisses, the other a kid with promise) planning a post-graduate escape, and the rampant drug trade threatening to consume them both…

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REVIEW: Under the Skin [2014]

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS** “Do you want to touch my neck?” Some movies require you to take a pause so they may settle into your consciousness and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that those are generally the good ones. It could be because the story is abstract or opaque and needs deciphering. Or perhaps it took an unexpected twist from initial preconceptions or mid-viewing hypotheses and you must now reconcile its reality with failed assumptions. Jonathan Glazer‘s Under the Skin, however, surprised me due to something I did expect: its silent,…

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REVIEW: American Storage [2006]

“I maintain it myself” It’s good to have friends in high places, but it’s better to have the chops to warrant their help. This is the life of Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien, production assistants on Anchorman and The 40 Year Old Virgin respectively who used their relationship with Judd Apatow and his troupe of actors to film a short. Using all their money and a three-day shooting schedule, American Storage was born as a witty little comedy about a grown man so temperamental and anxious about the outside…

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REVIEW: Neighbors [2014]

“We should go Mom tipping later” After respectively writing and directing a short film that dealt with a manchild living in a storage unit who befriends one of the employees in hopes to stay, Brendan O’Brien and Andrew Jay Cohen have decided to go a bit less high concept with their feature screenwriting debut. But while the quirky setting may be gone, the theme of surviving the suburban boredom of adulthood is not. One could say Neighbors is an evolutionary reworking of American Storage‘s concepts as the duo polishes things…

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FILM MARATHON: Movie Musicals #13: The Sound of Music [1965]

“They were strawberries! It’s been so cold lately they turned blue!” My enjoyment of Oscar-winning musical The Sound of Music can best be described as the product of subjective expectation. I finally saw it around the age of twelve or thirteen after hearing of its greatness for years only to be left staring at the television with a quizzical look that said, “That’s it?” Despite the music’s appeal—Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II‘s final collaboration with the latter passing away nine months following its Broadway debut—it seemed to add up…

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BNFF14 PREVIEW: The 8th Annual Buffalo Niagara Film Festival

It’s eight years later and The Buffalo Niagara International Film Festival is still going strong April 24th through May 3rd. I personally missed organizer and filmmaker Bill Cowell‘s inaugural season, but have been attending off and on as both a ticket holder and member of the press since. My first experience was in 2008 at the Riviera Theatre in Tonawanda. I drove over mostly because that night’s feature had a cast consisting of Bruce Dern and Kristen Stewart (pre-Twilight). While director Mary Stewart Masterson‘s The Cake Eaters proved worthy of…

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REVIEW: The Machine [2014]

“Some people can’t give up hope even if they know it’s hopeless” With so many writers and directors keen to give us a look at a future ravaged by an impending war between man and his creations, it’s always a breath of fresh air when someone decides to show the potential of an evolutionary leap towards harmony. That’s not to say Caradog W. James‘ film The Machine is devoid of violent carnage at the hands of bloodthirsty militaristic bureaucrats sitting behind desks as their employed scientists crack the code of…

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REVIEW: Transcendence [2014]

“They say there’s power in Boston” With a trailer digitizing Johnny Depp and electronic machinery created out of thin air, it’s an understatement to say I was surprised the beginning of Transcendence introduced a world without power. I thought the film was about new technology and the advancement of artificial intelligence harboring a potential for hubristic power grabs and the genocide of organic thinking/emotional response. Instead I saw broken screens on the street and a shop owner wedging a chewed-up keyboard into the gap between his door and the ground…

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REVIEW: Proxy [2014]

“Cause we all need someone to listen” I learned something while watching Zack Parker‘s horror (psychological thriller is a more apt genre label) film Proxy: Richmond, Indiana is a hotbed for crazy. He and cowriter Kevin Donner inject a little Münchausen syndrome, Prenatal Depression, and some run-of-the-mill psychopathy to round out the quartet of main characters. Each seemingly normal on the surface until a chaotic mind or the potential for psychotic break under tragic circumstances is exposed thanks to carefully unfolding revelations, the people populating this tale are regular folk…

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Babel’s Abraham Verghese teaches Buffalo the difference between curing and healing

It is interesting to see how Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel series has evolved over the years. Beyond locale (now residing at Kleinhans Music Hall after its origins in Asbury Hall at Babeville), artistic director (Barbara Cole seamlessly transitioning on from Michael Kelleher), and audience (last night’s crowd had to be the largest since Salman Rushdie and the season’s total far and away the best in its seven years), we now are beginning to see how expansive the title of “writer” truly is. The announcement of next season’s final speaker…

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REVIEW: The Grand Budapest Hotel [2014]

“Who’s got the throat-slitter?” The films of Wes Anderson have always resided in some sort of parallel universe full of stylistic flights of fancy, but never has one been so completely defined by its fantasy than The Grand Budapest Hotel. His previous work exists to pay homage with stories filled to the brim by aesthetic flourishes and meticulously detailed set dressings that transport us into his familiar yet unfamiliar worlds. Rather than start with story as usual, however, his latest seems to have sprung out from its environment. This shouldn’t…

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