Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of five): *** 1/2

First-time writer/director J.C. Chandor wrote the Margin Call script as the real life financial crisis was happening in late 2008, when he himself was in a bit of a career and financial panic, and the final film reflects this feeling. Unlike a lot of films on the subject, even ones that purport to criticize (paging Oliver Stone), Margin Call doesn't romanticize Wall Street, and it also doesn't overtly moralize or even judge.

Continue Reading Margin Call

Compiled from staff picks and writer contributions, we're back with the 2011 Edition of the GreenCine Holiday Gift Guide! Our favorite picks for the best movies, music, books, and more for your your entire holiday shopping list. See also: 2009 and 2010 archived for even more ideas.

But of course we begin with the best gift of all - GreenCine gift certificates!

There's more reasons than ever to give the gift of GreenCine membership, good for 2 to up to 12 months and customizable with a gift message. Gift your favorite cinephile access to the best arthouse, Criterion, horror, indie, and otherwise ecclectic selection of over 25,000 titles. GreenCine memberships keep our community of film writers, bloggers, and enthusiasts alive, kickin', and chattin' about film, and your contribution goes towards organizations that promote the arts. 

Onward, ho, to the gifts!

Continue Reading The GreenCine Holiday Gift Guide! 2011 Edition

Reviewer: Philip Tatler IV
Rating (out of five): *****

Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game (also available for rent on Blu-Ray thanks to a reissue from Criterion) is a five-star a classic that anyone who cares about movies should have seen multiple times by now.

Paul Schrader placed Rules at the top of his Film Comment canon, the film has appeared in every Sight and Sound Greatest Films poll since 1952, and has never dropped below #3 on theyshootpictures.com’s cinephile aggregate list.

Renoir’s film has long since cemented its reputation, belonging in the company of such hallowed untouchables as Citizen Kane (also on Blu-Ray), Vertigo, the Godfather films (Blu-Ray), and Sunrise. If you haven’t seen it by now, shame on you. So – pedantic brow-beating aside – what’s the fuss all about?

Continue Reading The Rules of the Game (Criterion)

There's no slowin' down with the holidays, with another strong showing for new DVDs this week. Don't miss Sion Sono's 4-hour epic or the late Raul Ruiz's sprawling, epic period piece. Lots of cinematic gems to light up your holidays. 

Continue Reading New and Coming Releases: December 20, 2011

Reviewer: Philip Tatler IV
Rating (out of five): Elephant Boy - ** 1/2
The Drum - *** 1/2
The Jungle Book - ***
SET - ***

Nowadays, it’s feasible that an eleven-year-old elephant keeper could become a global superstar, provided he was aligned with the right reality TV show or viral video. In 1937, however, Sabu (nee Shelar Shaik) found fame via a more traditional route: by starring in several international box office hits. Sabu was an Urdu-speaking mahout (elephant driver) before he was pulled from obscurity by a location scout working for producer Alexander Korda. The Criterion Collection’s latest Eclipse series pays tribute to three of Sabu’s best-known entertainments.

Continue Reading Eclipse Series 30 - Sabu! (Elephant Boy / The Drum / The Jungle Book)

Reviewer: Philip Tatler IV
Rating (out of five): *** 1/2

With Tabloid, Errol Morris turns his camera on the lurid life story of Joyce McKinney, a fetching young lady from a small town in North Carolina whose love for a Mormon man resulted in several bizarre international incidents. Before the decade-spanning story is over, McKinney finds herself mixed up in alleged kidnapping, aberrant sexual practices, a Christlike canine, ugly undergarments, and even cloning.

Continue Reading Tabloid

This week's DVDs kung-fu kicks into your living rooms with the strength of an army of pandas. We've got some great docs, lots of Blu-Ray, horror, and more, inside!

Continue Reading New and Coming Releases: December 13, 2011.

Reviewer: Philip Tatler IV
Rating (out of five): **** 1/2

For whatever reason, Alex Cox – the iconoclast behind Repo Man, Sid & Nancy, and Straight to Hell – has never quite enjoyed the indie godfather reputation of Jim Jarmusch or David Lynch. Having created several of the best American films of the 1980s, Cox dropped off the cultural radar after the commercial failure of the fitfully brilliant Walker – his single stab at a studio-backed, comparatively large-budgeted film. During the two decades since, while Cox has languished due to a self-proclaimed “blacklist”, he’s directed seven little-seen films.

Continue Reading Highway Patrolman

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of five): * * *

The Human Resources Manager, released on DVD by the reliably interesting Film Movement catalog, won five major Israeli Ophir Awards (Israel’s Oscars). Directed by Eran Riklis, Based on A.B. Yehoshua's book "A Woman in Jerusalem," the film is a worthy if occasionally sluggish follow-up to his previous feature, The Lemon Tree. The film starts off a bit slow, but stick with it; when the story leaves Israel it resonates.

The titular employee (Mark Ivanir) manages Jerusalem's largest bakery, and his life is on the skids. He hates his job, his wife's left him, and he struggles to maintain connection to his young daughter. Then a foreign-born female employee, Yulia (interestingly, the only character in the film who is given a name), is killed in a suicide bombing, and he has to help the company make amends after negative news coverage, as well as make up for the fact that he basically knew nothing of the woman at all. The manager's boss (Gila Almagor) orders him to do damage control, and he ends up accompanying the victim's body to her homeland. She claims to want to take on the burden of guilt in this case but instead hangs him out to dry.

Continue Reading The Human Resources Manager

We've got movies out the gills this week ! Whether you're in the mood for pre-Code comedy, Italian horror,  political thrillers,  or an avant-garde interpretation of the history of cinema, we've got something for you, insde. 

Continue Reading New and Coming Releases: December 6, 2011