Yearly Archives: 2013

Side Effects review

Directed by Steven SoderberghWritten by Scott Z. BurnsIs this Steven Soderbergh's last feature film? If it is, it's a strangely fitting one, an exemplar of two of Soderbergh's distinct strengths: clean, uncluttered humanist storytelling and a zippy way with genre.That these styles—in this film anyway—make it something of a mash-up is OK with me. Going into it,…Read More

Mood Indigo trailer

I don't often post trailers on FITI, but this one just seemed so delightful I couldn't resist. In French it's known as L'Ecume des Jours, but in English it will be Mood Indigo, because naming a movie after a song, even a very old one, is preferable to a French word no one can say. It…Read More

Tom Hardy as Mad Max

Max's InterceptorSome of you may have seen this image when it made the rounds in December, but I'm just catching up. This is the first photo of Tom Hardy in the role that made Mel Gibson a star.George Miller's reboot of his post-apocalyptic Mad Max saga, called Mad Max: Fury Road, more than a decade…Read More

The Films of Steven Soderbergh

One of the biggest disappointments of 2013 (so far) is what appears to be Steven Soderbergh's (seemingly) serious intent to retire from directing movies. Soderbergh is consistently one of the most interesting American filmmakers. He's not often the screenwriter of his projects, but he's certainly an auteur in every other way I can think of.…Read More

HMV Closes

The HMV in my town closes its doors for good today. The retail shutdown has been coming for awhile, as predicted by other location closings in the west, and I've dropped by the store on Spring Garden a couple of times since the Nothing Held Back! Sale has been happening. And I think I've figured…Read More

Jack Reacher review

Directed and written by Christopher McQuarrie, adapting the Lee Child book, One Shot.A sad coincidence, I suppose, that I'm writing about Jack Reacher today, and earlier I heard of the death of Michael Winner, a British director who was responsible for a number of thrillers and action movies of the 1970s, movies Jack Reacher is directly…Read More

The Last Stand review

Directed by Kim Jee-WoonWritten by Andrew Knauer, Jeffrey Nachmanoff and George NolfiOnce upon a time, action movies were different. In the 1980s, the guns were big, the explosions were big, the heroes were big, but CGI and superheroes weren't yet king. The star was still the biggest part of the deal: Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell,…Read More

Top 10 Movies of 2012

Welcome to a post collecting the names and details of films that wowed me through the 12 months of last year, typically arriving late as I caught up with everything I wanted to see. My criteria for inclusion are as follows: List-worthiness for me is a strange equation of cerebral and emotional, as much as…Read More

Zero Dark Thirty review

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow Written by Mark Boal In the opening scenes of Zero Dark Thirty, following the text that the film is "based on first-hand accounts of actual events," Jason Clarke's CIA agent, the single-named Dan, is interrogating a prisoner at some Black Site, an American ops location without an address, somewhere in Pakistan. They're…Read More