Capital New York

'This Is Not A Film,' and other great films of 2011

Panahi's career has been dogged by run-ins with Iranian cultural authorities and mullahs, due to his explicit dealing with social issues in Iran, primarily the position of women. What is happening to Iranian filmmakers right now is the most important thing happening in the film world. This Is Not a Film is an obituary for a man who is still alive. More

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By Sheila O'Malley

on December 23rd, 2011 9:30am

Why actors still talk about Charlie Chaplin, and what he teaches them about not acting funny

Mel Brooks has said that Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin were his mentors: "I really felt a closeness to Chaplin and to Keaton. How do you tell a story without talking or overacting? How do you simply indicate?" More

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By Sheila O'Malley

on December 21st, 2011 11:50am

'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo': Rooney Mara takes ownership of Lisbeth Salander, darkly

Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was probably not born with an antisocial personality; she has cultivated one in order to survive.

Her piercings, tattoos, Mohawk, and fierce stride are used expressly to intimidate and to announce to any room she enters, I may be a scrawny young woman, but do not mess with me. More

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By Sheila O'Malley

on December 20th, 2011 12:49pm

Sheila O'Malley commented on 'Anonymous': The smearing of William Shakespeare, done quickly, not well

Well, yes, I said we can just "surmise". And boy do the scholars surmise with Shakespeare! It's amazing some of the things they come up with. In general, I dislike trying to explain a person's life autobiographically through their art, and with Shakespeare it's a terrible habit because we know so little about him personally. So HAMLET is seen as autobiographical. I think those of us who are NOT geniuses are disturbed by the geniuses among us: they dont make sense, we want them to make sense. But trying to nail down his thoughts on this or that issue based on something that happened in his plays seems to me to be totally counterintuitive in terms of the purpose and expression of art. Shakespeare, above all else, wanted to get asses in the seats, make sure they stayed there, and his focus was on creating entertaining and gripping pieces of theatre.

Posted on October 28th, 2011 12:32am

'Anonymous': The smearing of William Shakespeare, done quickly, not well

The poster for Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous demands excitedly, “Was Shakespeare a fraud?” The breathlessness sets the tone for the entire movie.

Emmerich, director of 2012 and Independence Day, and not known for subtlety, presents Anonymous as not only a political thriller and literary whodunit, but a portrait of a country on the verge of civil war, with CGI troops gathering outside CGI London, long-haired scheming Earls (who all look alike) playing racquetball, and an angry mob charging the Tower. More

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By Sheila O'Malley

on October 27th, 2011 1:44am

'Shame': Being a sex-addicted bachelor in New York gets old

"We're not bad people, we just come from a bad place," says Sissy (Carey Mulligan) to her brother Brandon (Michael Fassbender).

That "bad place" is never made explicit in Steve McQueen's latest feature, Shame, which details the numbing routine of a sex-addicted bachelor in Manhattan, but the results are clear in the self-destructive behavior of these two siblings. There's a lot of graphic sex in Shame, which may attract most of the attention from audiences and critics, but the feeling of survived trauma pulses beneath the film like unacknowledged radio static. McQueen is not interested in why Sissy and Brandon are the way they are; he wants to examine how trauma and addiction actually play out in the everyday lives of those afflicted. There is a lot of repetition in Shame, showing Brandon's narcotized-by-sex routine. More

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By Sheila O'Malley

on October 9th, 2011 2:05pm

'The Ides of March': Unintended ode to an innocent era before wide stances, Craigslist-trolls and wayward tweets

Is it a surprise to anyone that American politics can be a dirty business?

We've all seen Bill Clinton wagging his finger at us and we've witnessed the downfall of onetime liberal golden boy John Edwards; we've seen socially conservative, morally judgmental Republican congressmen and senators topless on Craigslist and in wide stances in airport bathrooms. Peripatetic politicians are constantly exposed to material and sexual temptation, and not at all infrequently, they yield to it. More

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By Sheila O'Malley

on October 7th, 2011 4:16pm

'A Dangerous Method': A talking cure, conducted by Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender

"You'd think they knew we're on our way, bringing them the plague," Sigmund Freud says dryly to his colleague, Carl Jung, as their boat pulls into New York harbor on the eve of their joint lecture tour. The plague of psychoanalysis thus arrived in America, where it flourishes to this day. More

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By Sheila O'Malley

on October 6th, 2011 3:14pm

'This Is Not a Film': The extinguishing of Jafar Panahi's career, for real, and right before your eyes

Award-winning Iranian director Jafar Panahi was arrested on March 10, 2010, on suspicion that he had been making a film critical of the regime. International outcry was immediate. The Cannes Film Festival happened to be going on at the time, and Jafar Panahi had been chosen to be on the jury. As a protest, his chair was left open, and Juliette Binoche, Abbas Kiarostami and others expressed their outrage and sadness, in words that went round the world. More

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By Sheila O'Malley

on October 5th, 2011 7:20pm

'Living in the Material World': An 'honest' Scorsese documentary about a curious Beatle

Martin Scorsese's latest documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, opens with grainy home-movie footage of a bunch of red tulips in a garden bed. The camera stays on the tulips for a long time. Nothing happens for a while. Then, from the right hand of the screen, George Harrison enters, squatting behind the tulips, staring directly into the camera with an unblinking gaze. Then, again, nothing happens for a while. It's mysterious, and a bit confrontational, and is a good launching pad for a lengthy examination of this man of extremes. More

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By Sheila O'Malley

on October 4th, 2011 10:42am