[Editor's Note: This is the latest entry in House contributor Kevin B. Lee's Shooting Down Pictures, a record of his ongoing quest to see every title on the list of the 1000 Greatest Films compiled by They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?]

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Though it would be extremely gauche for the IFC to mention this, their programming of The Fire Within this weekend (as part of an ongoing screening series of Louis Malle films) couldn't be more eerily well-timed, occurring only days after the shocking death and alleged suicide of actor Heath Ledger. As it seems with the tragic case of Ledger, the film's protagonist, Alain Leroy, is recently divorced, struggling with substance abuse, ensconced in a milieu of affluent socialites and yet thoroughly alienated from all of them. Watching the onscreen behavior of one self-destructive mind presented the temptation to link it to another's.

Perhaps putting that much demand for insight on the film unfairly led to my initial disappointment following the screening.

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To read the rest of the article at Shooting Down Pictures, click here.

By John Lichman

[Untraceable is rated R and is now playing nationwide. Spoilers within.]

Woe be for The Internet, a magical place still being redefined and tweaked since Al Gore pulled the concept from deep within the lockbox of his mind. Ancient political jokes aside, The Internet receives more hassle than you'd expect from mainstream media, which treats it as a tool of sinister hackers (The Net, Firewall) or a way for serial killers and stalkers to track victims more efficiently (Perfect Stranger, Swimfan). Hell, it even unleashes pure evil (Kairo; Ghost in the Machine). The Internet is clearly for more than porn—it's also to scare the bejesus out of luddites and uninspiring first dates. Continue Reading »

"You're always going to be tearing away at yourself until you come to terms with who you are...Until you come full circle." So says the disembodied voice of Col. Trautman (the late Richard Crenna), super-soldier John Rambo's mentor, in a nightmare sequence from Sylvester Stallone's Rambo. In this long-delayed fourth episode in the action franchise, our gravel-voiced angel of death rouses himself from his isolationist torpor long enough to guide Christian missionaries upriver to deliver medicine to oppressed villagers in the Union of Myanmar (here called Burma), then leads mercenaries to the same village to rescue the kidnapped Christians. The hero's dream occurs during an introverted lull in the action—one of those inevitable, oddly charming moments when Rambo contemplates not getting involved. (Like we paid ten bucks to watch him sit on his ass and mope.) Minutes later, Rambo hammers red-hot metal against an anvil and comes to a voice-over realization: "You know what you are... What you're made of... War is in your blood. You didn't kill for your country. You killed for yourself." Continue Reading »

By Steven Boone

How many critics have praised 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days for its bracing drabness, its ugliness, its lack of style? This film about a young woman's adventure helping her best friend get an illegal abortion in '80s communist Romania is, in fact, more beautiful and stylized than a Mikhail Kalatozov-Busby Berkeley-Hype Williams three-way. Writer-director Cristian Mungiu's style is often referred to as deadpan, but that's probably only because there is no non-diegetic music to underline the expressive images. There is nothing deadpan about the sorrowful play of light or the strangled terror Mungiu pulls from urban ambient sounds. Critics, perhaps unaccustomed to visual music that isn't operatic or pop-grandiose, tend to slap the label cinéma-vérité on a film like 4 months (or the work of the Dardenne brothers) and be done with it. That's playing these films cheap. Continue Reading »

By Keith Uhlich

Screened at the 45th New York Film Festival.

[Editor's Note: "On The Circuit" is a joint production of The House Next Door and Zoom In Online. For news, events, training, and other points of interest to the creative community, please visit Zoom In Online by clicking here.]

It's easy to see why so many are impressed by 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days, Romanian writer/director Cristian Mungiu's much-lauded Cannes prizewinner. In telling the period tale of Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and her pregnant friend Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), two women seeking a clandestine and illegal abortion during the twilight years of the oppressive Nicolae Ceausescu regime, Mungiu and cinematographer Oleg Mutu offer up an immediately riveting extended take aesthetic (single shots—both static and tracking—held long past the emotional breaking point) that makes the proceedings unfold like a controlled, virtually real-time nightmare. Mungiu's technical choices (the film takes place over the course of a single day and grippingly feels it) and the fierce commitment of his cast are so impressive in the moment that they near-completely obscure the hollowness at the film's center; if we were to measure movies solely by immediate experience, 4 months would be, most decidedly, a masterpiece.
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This review was originally published on The House Next Door in October 2007. To read the rest, click here.