Films – Page 2 – the Addison Recorder

Mr. Rostan at the Movies: “The Danish Girl”

December 18, 2015 by Andrew Rostan Leave a Comment

Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every week, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

My critical role here at the Addison Recorder runs headlong into my long, complex history with The Danish Girl, a film that has followed me around for nearly a decade and left me with me an impression as great as that made by Red Desert. I recommend this movie, but I am grateful today to have this venue to explain why.

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The Awards Season Cometh – 2015 Edition

December 4, 2015 by Alex Bean Leave a Comment

Alex: Ready or not, it is Oscar season. Earlier this week, the National Board of Review (Best Film: Mad Max: Fury Road) and New York Film Critics’ Circle (Best Film: Carol)both gave out their annual awards. So, Andrew, that means it is high time for you and I to dive into this season and have a chat about what the race looks like right now and what we’re rooting for.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: A Throwback to the Fifties

November 27, 2015 by Andrew Rostan Leave a Comment

Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every week, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

This piece goes up the day after Thanksgiving. Chances are, fair reader, you’re home with your relatives or your relatives have come to you. There’s a few lazy days following the turkey consumption and people may feel like seeing a movie. However, almost every choice has pitfalls. You need a film that won’t provoke a rant from your relations, and doesn’t require watching three previous films, and isn’t from a franchise you find archaic, and is still new enough that people aren’t sick of hearing about it.

Brooklyn is 2015’s grand prize winner for “movie to see with your older relatives.” It is a movie with nothing objectionable in it. It is also beautifully made and a serious Oscar contender thanks to the figure at its center.

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Who Watches the Mockingjay?: Thoughts on the Finale of the Hunger Game Franchise

November 23, 2015 by Travis J. Cook Leave a Comment

Box office numbers are coming in for the past weekend, which saw the wide release of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt. 2, the fourth and final installment of The Hunger Games film franchise. They’re typically ginormous – buoyed by hordes of fans who poured out for the latest event movie of the season (see Bond, James and that upcoming space opera movie for other similar event movies).

And yet, there’s already a sense of disappointment going around the Internet at the cumulative take.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: Your SPECTRE Against Mine

November 18, 2015 by Andrew Rostan Leave a Comment

Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every week, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

This review doubles as a response to our critical brethren, who have developed the most polarizing reactions to the movie in question. Here is mine. SPECTRE, the twenty-fourth James Bond film and one of the most expensive movies ever made, is not that good. It is, in parts, downright bad. But it instantly became one of my favorite 007 movies, and one I will giddily rewatch again and again.

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Mr. Rostan at “The Peanuts Movie:” The Mythos of Charlie Brown

November 13, 2015 by Andrew Rostan Leave a Comment

Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every week, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

The Peanuts Movie is a film I had the most mixed feelings imaginable about upon hearing of its production. One of the most unfailingly joyful parts of my childhood was discovering and devouring Charles M. Schulz’s world. This went beyond devouring the books and television specials. I would read out loud and give every character a distinctive voice, and some of the first stories I ever made up were further adventures for Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the gang, and as I grew older and learned more about the deeper philosophical meaning of Peanuts (most recently well summarized by Todd VanDerWerff in Vox), I fell in love with the strip more. Peanuts is a part of me.

The last film adaptation was released four years before I was born, and when I heard the new movie was a joint effort of BlueSky, 20^th Century-Fox, Paul Feig, and the Schulz family, I felt a sense of promise. But it was also a 3-D movie for the most 2-D of characters, and the history of Peanuts in cinema sets a poor precedent for this film.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: The Enduring Stillness of “Room”

November 6, 2015 by Andrew Rostan Leave a Comment

Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every week, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

There are many words to describe Room, adapted by Emma Donoghue from her novel and directed by Lenny Abrahamson, but if I had to sum it up in only one, that word would be “still.” Room is a quiet, lingering, peaceful movie for the most part, and this tone serves to both make the moments of emotional crescendo all the more hard-hitting and allow the audience to enter the characters’ emotional states in the midst of the calm, thus allowing the story’s drama and power to overwhelm. Room is an unforgettable picture, and while credit is due to the entire team, the greatest masterstroke is the performance of Brie Larson.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: “In the Shadow of Women” and “Youth”

October 30, 2015 by Andrew Rostan Leave a Comment

Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every week, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

I have spent more time than I could add up at the movies in Chicago, but shamefully I did not go to the Chicago International Film Festival until its 51^st program this year. (And as befits our home base’s culture, it is so terrifically run I will never make the mistake of skipping it again.) My two screenings were of new films not yet generally released in America. One is a small art-house picture, the other is expected to be an Oscar contender, and both are far from perfect…yet are both worth seeing for different reasons.

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Paved With Good Intentions: Beasts of No Nation

October 26, 2015 by Travis J. Cook Leave a Comment

Last week, Alex wrote an enlightening article about the traditional portrayal of Africa in Western Cinema here. The impetus of the piece was the arrival of the film Beasts of No Nation, adapted and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga from the novel of the same name by Uzodinma Iweala. It’d be a lie to say that many of Alex’s thoughts and observations about the Africa of Western cinema didn’t color my reading of the film, but as with all good writing, it helped me to take notice of several things that might have been missed.

What was unmistakable to me, however, is the fact that Beasts of No Nation, in spite of its ambitions, fails to succeed on several different fronts. It is not without merit – but there’s a great deal missing that could have made this a great movie instead of another mediocre portrayal of an often-overlooked region of the world.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: A Well-Made Play

October 23, 2015 by Andrew Rostan Leave a Comment

Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every week, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

During high school English, I learned the meaning of the term “well-made play:” an updating of Aristotle’s classical principles of drama that mostly came from the mind of French playwright Eugene Scribe. The well-made play is based around tight structure, plenty of off-screen action, a unity in time and place, key information that only certain characters know, and a fall-and-rise plot leading to a triumphant climax.

It may be about an innovator who helped build the world as we know it, but Steve Jobs is at its heart a filmed version of a well-made play, and this unusual choice makes it transcend the multitude of controversies concerning its journey to the screen, for the result is an unforgettable picture.

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