The Lovely Bones
Film review by: Witney Seibold
It’s kind of a high concept, but one familiar to those who saw 1998’s “What Dreams May Come”: A 14-year-old girl (Saoirse Ronan) is murdered by a local serial killer (Stanley Tucci), and goes to purgatory, where she watches how her family deals with her death. (more…)
Me and Orson Welles
Film review by: Witney Seibold
Orson Welles is a Hollwood legend, but he’s one of those legends who – thanks to his frank self-awareness, brilliance in wit, openness, self-deprecation, and all-too-human smirk – is relatable. It helps, also, that he was an insufferable SOB who berated his actors, exploited the trust of his wives and mistresses, and fired the people he had personal beefs with. Despite his reputation as a legend and a genius (which he was), he was also refreshingly… human. (more…)
The Road
Film review by: Witney Seibold
I made the mistake of reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road before seeing John Hillcoat’s film version of it. McCarthy is a master of prose, managing to including great details and emotions in brief, almost scattershot passages of half grunted thoughts. What a film does is make explicit things that were more powerful when implicit. So I was focusing on how literal the film was, rather than adaptive. I had the same problem with “Watchmen” earlier this year. (more…)
2012
Film review by: Witney Seibold
What's that?
Roland Emmerich, the disaster master behind “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” outdoes himself with “2012.” The world took a beating in his previous films, but now it gets an unbridled savage pummeling. (more…)
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Film review by: Witney Seibold
There is a bristling life to Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” that is lacking in many animated features. As animation has leaned closer and closer to realistic-looking CGI, and characters with creepily rotoscoped movements, we have lost the hand-crafted, homemade, human characteristics that drew us to the art form in the first place. “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is largely done entirely by hand, and has a wonderfully shabby quality that makes it feel lived in and warm. (more…)
The Dead Pit (1989)
Film review by: Witney Seibold
I, like most of my generation, have a nostalgic draw toward the gory, low-fi slasher flicks of the 1980s. These R-rated bouts of bloody goofiness were the transgressive thrill desperately sought by me and my peers, on those magical nights of video store scouring and late-night cable TV hunts. (more…)
Paranormal Activity
Film review by: Witney Seibold
Ten years after “The Blair Witch Project” (and nearly 30 after “Cannibal Holocaust”), we have Oren Peli’s surprisingly scary, low-budget “Paranormal Activity,” another film shot in amateur documentary style, featuring a few neophyte twentysomethings investigating the supernatural. (more…)
Subtitle Poetry, Canto II
A found poem by: Witney Seibold’s DVD Player
My Magnavox MDV 410 is still communicating with me. (more…)
Three Cheers for Darkened Years! 