Slant Magazine

The Hangover Part III

2013-05-23T21:21:48+00:00

Death hangs over The Hangover Part III, the alleged final chapter in director Todd Phillips's franchise about a group of vacationing dudes prone to all sorts of dick-centric depravity. Beginning with the fatal heart attack of rich-boy lunatic Alan's (Zach Galifianakis) father, Sid (Jeffrey Tambor), and carrying on with a diptych of brutal shootings, a sense of mortality is palpably felt for the first time in the series. Sid's funeral reunites…

By: Chris Cabin

Links for the Day: Obama on Drones and Guantanamo, Helen Mirren Grants Dying Wish, Morgan Freeman Takes Power Nap, Michael Cera Goes Boom, & More!

2013-05-23T15:37:00+00:00

Obama administration admits to killing four Americans in drone strikes. The president also renews his commitment to closing Guantanamo. Richard Linklater and Francis Ford Coppola line up their next films. Presumptuous talking head meets lovely atheist. Helen Mirren helps grant dying boy's last wish. Sean Hackett on fighting bullying with movies.

By: Sal Cinquemani

A Pig Across Paris

2013-05-23T13:50:43+00:00

Prominently set during the German occupation of Paris, Claude Autant-Lara's A Pig Across Paris is a comedic assault on the anxieties that darkened the City of Lights during WWII. Markets run out of groceries before day's end, rationing has led to increased desperation, and the winding streets are littered with badgering cops and Nazis. That last detail provides the biggest dilemma for hapless plebeian Marcel Martin (Bourvil), a doltish former cabbie who now runs deliveries for…

By: Nick McCarthy

Interview: Ari Folman

2013-05-23T00:51:53+00:00

Five years ago, Ari Folman's striking animated documentary Waltz with Bashir made a triumphant run through festivals worldwide, winning several significant international prizes and garnering something of a surprise Oscar nomination in the foreign-language category. The film, which depicted the author's search for his lost memories of his service in the 1982 Lebanon War, was grim, moving, and fiercely original in execution. Five years…

By: Anna Tatarska

Interview: Julie Delpy and Richard Linklater

2013-05-23T00:25:06+00:00

In this wearying age of relentless irony and challenge-free media, another contemplative, loquacious, and bittersweet outing with Ethan Hawke's Jesse and Julie Delpy's Celine, the passionate pair who first pondered life and romance in 1995's Before Sunrise, then rendezvoused with greater verve in 2004's Before Sunset, feels especially heaven-sent. Painstakingly scripted by Hawke, Delpy, and director Richard Linklater, Before Midnight continues what's become a grand…

By: R. Kurt Osenlund

Motive: Season One

2013-05-22T22:15:51+00:00

The advertised appeal of ABC's Canadian import Motive is that it's a "whydunnit?" rather than a "whodunnit?," giving its audience a glimpse at the identities of both the victim and the killer before any of the story's detective work begins and having the reason for the crime be the focus of its mysteries. Unfortunately, this gimmicky premise quickly renders the show a "whocares?," as…

By: Mike LeChevallier

Cannes Film Festival 2013: Only God Forgives Review

2013-05-22T15:41:41+00:00

Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive arrived at an opportune moment. Coming off a decade where the American genre film devolved into lowest-common-denominator investments and blockbusters ballooned skyward on the backs of sequels and franchises, Refn's modest exercise in crime pastiche and car-chase nostalgia parlayed both the exhaustion of Hollywood's narrative resources and—perhaps more importantly—the gathering mainstream curiosity in independent music'…

By: Jordan Cronk

Links for the Day: Weiner Running for New York Mayor, Critics’ Choice TV Award Noms, Time on ‘Angelina Effect,’ Zach Galifianakis’s Arm Candy, & More

2013-05-22T15:31:12+00:00

Disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner is running for mayor of New York City. Meanwhile, crack-smoking Toronto mayor Rob Ford has "ruined [his] city's reputation for good." The third annual Critics' Choice TV Award nominations have been announced. Time's new cover story explores "The Angelina Effect" and the impact of her choice. Reporting from Cannes, our friend Keith Uhlich calls Behind the Candelabra a masterpiece. Zach Galifianakis'…

By: R. Kurt Osenlund

Epic

2013-05-22T03:26:16+00:00

Epic is bound to be scolded for its screenplay's rampant rip-offs, which can be traced to The Borrowers, The Wizard of Oz, Fern Gully, The Lord of the Rings, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (charges of Avatar copycatting are sure to abound as well, but since that film was already epically derivative, such criticisms don't seem fair). The script's real problem, though, isn't in the tales it apes,…

By: R. Kurt Osenlund

The Great Escape

2013-05-21T21:43:14+00:00

Though adapted by James Clavell and W.R. Burnett (along with an uncredited Walter Newman) from Paul Brickhill's nonfiction account of the 1944 Stalag Luft III escape, John Sturges's The Great Escape is equally inspired by a great fiction. The filmmaker's treatment of the massive POW escape from a camp in Nazi-occupied Poland alludes to the faux civility of warfare that Jean Renoir depicted with equal fury and eloquence in Le…

By: Chris Cabin

Cannes Film Festival 2013: Shield of Straw & Blind Detective Reviews

2013-05-21T16:02:16+00:00

Both Takashi Miike's muscular chase flick Shield of Straw and Johnnie To's wildly compounded romantic policier Blind Detective make an asset out of their respective pillaging of genre signifiers. That these individual films succeed to varying degrees—in some instances in spite of themselves—matters little in the grand scheme of their creators' narratives: Each have made more original films, more consistently…

By: Jordan Cronk

Links for the Day: Violent Tornado Hits Oklahoma, R.I.P. Ray Manzarek and Romanthony, Rally Against NYC Gay Violence, New Beyoncé Single, & More!

2013-05-21T14:01:54+00:00

Violent tornado in Oklahoma leaves an unconfirmed number of people dead. Unbelievable footage of the storm. Republican Senator Tom Coburn seeks to offset emergency tornado aide. Remembering the Doors' co-founder and keyboardist Ray Manzarek. Thousands rallied against recent LGBT-related violence in New York City last night. Listen to Beyoncé's new single, "Grown Woman."

By: Sal Cinquemani

The Kids Are All Right: Orphans at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre

2013-05-20T19:57:21+00:00

Orphans has got some major daddy issues. Lyle Kessler's 30-year-old regional theater mainstay is the Field of Dreams of plays: Men go to laugh, whoop it up, and cry, wishing they could get a hug from Papa. The plot, as simple and primal as a fable, serves as a delivery system for sensations: Phillip and Treat have made it out of adolescence all on their own;…

By: Jon Magaril

Storybook Characters: John Cassavetes’s Shadows at Jack

2013-05-20T17:43:55+00:00

"I'm not one of them storybook characters," a charismatic young man assures his girl of the moment. As the plot develops, we watch the girl be seduced and then disillusioned by the man she thought was one-of-a-kind. Her hard lesson captures in microcosm the appeal of adapting John Cassavetes's 1959 film Shadows to the stage, a project taken on two years ago by the ensemble company…

By: Jason Fitzgerald

We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks

2013-05-20T17:23:34+00:00

With the hyper-polished and overlong We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, prolific documentarian Alex Gibney cribs from existing interviews, headlines, and media reports pertaining to the 2010 WikiLeaks scandal and re-appropriates them in a fashion fit for a Hollywood blockbuster. Making the assumption that the WikiLeaks controversy hasn't already been well-publicized, Gibney starts from the beginning, explaining Julian Assange's operation—releasing classified material to the public, government be damned—and the ensuing…

By: Nick McCarthy

3:10 to Yuma

2013-05-20T17:01:25+00:00

In the tradition of many American westerns, 3:10 to Yuma is a study in masculinity that dramatizes a man's struggle to balance the needs of his community—or, in this case, his family—with his personal needs as an individual, though the film is distinctive from a conventional oater in a number of ways, particularly for its spare, naked immediacy. The action in Delmer Daves's film isn'…

By: Chuck Bowen

Doctor Who: Season 7, Episode 14, “The Name of the Doctor”

2013-05-20T15:57:38+00:00

It's been a long haul since the seventh season premiere almost nine months ago, but showrunner Steven Moffat has finally delivered a tremendous resolution to the mystery of Clara Oswald (Jenna-Louise Coleman), the "impossible girl" who the Doctor (Matt Smith) has encountered multiple times, living apparently unconnected lives in different times and places. "The Name of the Doctor" is a superb finale, providing a…

By: Steven Cooper

Links for the Day: Baghdad Car Bombs, Drama Desk Awards, Beyoncé Pregnant, Inside Llewyn Davis’s Cannes Debut, Game of Thrones’s Penis Fetish, & More

2013-05-20T15:19:22+00:00

Car bomb attacks sweep across Baghdad, killing at least 70. Beyoncé is expecting baby number two...or is she? Chinese hackers resume their attacks on U.S. targets. The 59th annual Drama Desk Awards were announced yesterday. Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis makes its Cannes debut. Can gay New Yorker Marc Carson's murder have as big an impact as Matthew Shepard's? {…

By: R. Kurt Osenlund

Cannes Film Festival 2013: Inside Llewyn Davis Review

2013-05-20T13:56:29+00:00

The Coen brothers switch gears so often and with such gleeful finesse that their restlessness can no longer qualify as genre-hopping pastiche, if it ever did. At this point they're simply a style unto themselves, a self-sufficient duo with a built in audience, art-house cred, and, when they want to indulge, box-office potential. Inside Llewyn Davis, then, isn't a curveball so much as another stopover…

By: Jordan Cronk

Doin’ It in the Park: Pickup Basketball, NYC

2013-05-20T02:50:32+00:00

Though invaluable as a sociocultural survey of the American dream, Steve James's epic documentary Hoop Dreams is somewhat worthless as a basketball movie. The film is vital for its deeply humane depiction of marginalized youths' desires to become basketball stars, but the game itself primarily serves as a thematic backdrop. That's not the case with Doin' It in the Park, a documentary directed by Kevin Couliau and Bobbito Garcia that explores the history of New York'…

By: Drew Hunt