Closer
Directed by Mike Nichols
By Peter Knegt

A lot of people are not going to enjoy Closer. It is a dark, cold and generally distressing film about the state of romance in today's increasingly self-involved society. This is not to say that Closer is not a good film, in fact, it is a great film. It’s just not one that is going to make you leave the theatre feeling good about yourself.

Directed by the gifted Mike Nichols (whose long-spanning career includes The Graduate, The Birdcage and last year's spectacular HBO miniseries Angels in America), Closer intertwines the relationships between four drastically flawed individuals: Larry (Clive Owen), Alice (Natalie Portman), Dan (Jude Law) and Anna (Julia Roberts). Essentially, the film follows the romantic beginnings and tragic endings of each relationship without showing the typically boring middle.

Working from an adaptation of Patrick Marber’s play, Nichols easily makes the transition from stage to cinema. The editing is tight, allowing the audience to intensely feel the deep emotional ride of the characters. And he works hard to get everything he can out of his actors. Jude Law is predictably charming as the struggling writer/helpless romantic. Julia Roberts plays way against type as a woman who seems to have no regard for anything but her own happiness. And Clive Owen and Natalie Portman, the least famous of the foursome, steal nearly every scene they're in with passionate, emotionally-charged performances.

Closer is being advertised as a love story for our era. This is obviously a tactic to get people in the theatre, because Closer is not really about love. Love plays a role in the overall subject of human nature but it is not a love story. Closer is a bold, intense portrayal of the dark side of human relationships. And for a mainstream film starring Hollywood's so-called "sweetheart," credit is certainly due. (Columbia/Sony)

Primer - Dir. by Shane Carruth
Though it’s by now tedious to report on the low budgets of debut indies, there’s no denying the gulf between what $7,000 ought to buy you and what it’s bought Shane Carruth’s Primer. A student of ’70s paranoia film, as well as a refugee from the engineering field, Carruth’s taken his passion and his milieu and made something surprisingly accomplished: an industrial horror film that’s stylish and to the point in rendering white-collar ambition and the lengths to which it drives us. ...Read More
The Aviator - Dir. by Martin Scorsese
Howard Hughes may have been crazy, but, as we learn through Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, he was also fascinating. Though Hughes was eccentric, his nuttiness came in differing degrees: the director/producer/aviator is most famous for being obsessive-compulsive and germ phobic, illnesses that led him to lock himself in a room, naked, collecting his urine in milk bottles. But what Scorsese shows us through Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of Hughes is that he was also a risk-taking engineering genius who created some significant developments in airplane design history. ...Read More
A Very Long Engagement - Dir. by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom Of The Opera - Dir. by Joel Schumacher
Are We There Yet? - Dir. by Brian Levant
Assault on Precinct 13 - Dir. by Jean-François Richet
Beyond The Sea - Dir. by Kevin Spacey
Blade: Trinity - Dir. by David S. Goyer
Coach Carter - Dir. by Thomas Carter
Elektra - Dir. by Rob Bowman
Fat Albert - Dir. by Joel Zwick
Hotel Rwanda - Dir. by Terry George
In Good Company - Dir. by Paul Weitz
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events - Dir. by Brad Silberling
Lightning In A Bottle - Dir. by Antoine Fuqua
Meet the Fockers - Dir. by Jay Roach
Million Dollar Baby - Dir. by Clint Eastwood
Ocean's Twelve - Dir. by Steven Soderbergh
Red Lights - Dir. by Cedric Kahn
Son Frère (His Brother) - Dir. by Patrice Chéreau
Spanglish - Dir. by James L. Brooks
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - Dir. by Wes Anderson
The Merchant of Venice - Dir. by Michael Radford
The Music Box
The term "videogame music" is often intended as an insult, deriding electronic beatscapes as rudimentary by comparing them to the 8-bit by necessity, bleep-based soundtracks of early Atari and Nintendo games. (See: Castles, Crystal) That Super Mario's theme music remains embedded in the frontal lobes of anyone under the age of 40 proves the critical weakness of the diss ― but it's also hopelessly archaic considering how much videogame music has evolved over the years.... Read More
Etaoin Shrdlu - Mating Calls
Explosive and precise, Etaoin Shrdlu knowingly wink at the perception that their post-hardcore math rock musical approach might be a throwback while simultaneously contributing something vibrant to punk rock with Mating Calls. Featuring members of significant bands like Blake, I Can Put my Ar... Full Review
Bayonetta [PS3 / Xbox 360]
"I've got a fever and the only cure is dead angels."
-Bayonetta

Ever since the Christmastime gaming deluge ended, I've been killing a lot of angels. Though God's messengers have been bad guys in other pop-cultural products ― His Dark Materials book trilogy, the pas... Full Review
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