Sloan Avrich grew up watching her father Barry Avrich produce and direct movies and stage productions. Some of his most iconic films Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story, Show Stopper: The Theatrical Life of Garth Drabinsky, Jackie Mason: The Ultimate Jew and The Citizen Cohl: Untold Story reveal his passion for unique real life characters.
Jennifer Aniston and Tim Robbins are husband and wife in Life of Crime, Daniel Schechter’s adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel Switch. A pair of incompetent – but likeable – cons (John Hawkes and Mos Def) kidnap her and demand $1M in ransom. Her husband’s not paying, so she joins forces with the abductors to wreak
Rob Grant came to the Canadian Film Centre’s Directors Lab in Toronto with a wealth of experience editing the films Cabin in the Woods, The A-Team, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, and 20th Century Fox’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. He’d spent time writing and directing films to prepare for his new path before joining
Although the racing sequences will please fans of the genre, Need for Speed’s predictable plot and lackluster pacing grind the film to a halt. The movie becomes an exercise in waiting for the next action spot with no suspense in how everything will turn out by the time the end credits roll. Based on the
Although it is weighed down by its script and pacing, director Darren Aronofsky’s Noah features dazzling visual effects and action sequences that make the film feel truly epic. The film straddles the line of Biblical tale and full on fantasy, but manages to be entertaining if the audience is willing to give it a chance.
With supernatural elements that bring the classic good vs. evil story to the screen and an impressive cast, Winter’s Tale should have been a great film. Instead, the movie is weighed down by a confusing plot that doesn’t live up to expectation, a lot of overacting, and a very slow moving pace. With that said,
Sporting beautiful cover art, the classic television miniseries James Clavell’s Shogun has arrived on Blu-ray looking incredible and loaded with enough bonus features to make it truly worth the purchase price. The series does feel a tad dated on Blu-ray, but the costume design and sets still manage to capture the essence of Clavell’s novel
I, Origins is a provocative drama about metaphysics and the possibility of reincarnation. Filmmaker Mike Cahill visited similar territory in his pioneering first feature Another Earth. I, Origins stars Michael Pitt as a molecular biologist working on a database of human eye pupils to determine if any patterns emerge. At first he believes that pupils are
Screened at the 40th Seattle International Film Festival, Pawel Pawlikowski’s atmospheric “Ida” opened June 13, 2014 at the SIFF Cinema Uptown in Seattle. Presented in 35mm format, this film is one of the most visually striking black and white productions to be seen. Director Pawlikowski (“Last Resort,” “My Summer of Love”) works closely with Agata
Australian mystery thriller with all the grit in the outback and a little more. David Michôd ups the ante and hauls in a big one in this Aussie thriller set in the desolate outback ten year after the collapse. The collapse? The comedians in the audience will point out that the outback ten years after