by MATTHEW SORRENTO Guillermo del Toro has discussed how his childhood helped mold his imagination – being raised in a stern Roman Catholic family only fueled his dark fantasies. His great-aunt, a prevalent influence and caregiver, forbade him from drawing gothic and grotesque images, encouraging his passion to grow. These fantasies would become essential to his ... read more »

by Matthew Sorrento Films often speculate about how we’d react should a partner we thought dead (or approaching death) suddenly reappear. In Cast Away, Tom Hanks’ character returns home to find that his wife has moved on; in Frank Darabont’s current AMC series, The Walking Dead, the wife of a police officer thought dead has ... read more »

by Matthew Sorrento  If intentional camp is bad, then camp striving to be bad is even worse. So claimed Susan Sontag, in her 1964 essay “Notes on Camp,” and others addressing the subject after her. A camp sensibility should come about by accident, when filmmakers work in earnest but ironically miss the mark. In the ... read more »

Film scholar David Bordwell describes – dismisses? – crime films as venues for showy roles, opportunities for actors to break away from their comfort zones and find their bad selves. When false, the proceeds are cringe-worthy, but when one’s ready for a true breakout, what fun it is.  This was the case for John Cassavetes ... read more »

Always eager to present serious issues, Tyler Perry found a batch in Ntozake Shange’s play For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. Before entering filmmaking, Perry triumphed in the theater, where he has written, directed, and frequently starred in a number of popular melodramas, often musical and farcical. This blend of ... read more »

There’s certainly various elements uniting in this confident film. Individually, they don’t seem like much, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Just when Oliver Stone delivered the new Wall Street, a well-made film based on aged material looking refreshed, David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin offer a well-made take on the ... read more »

Filmmaker Ariel Schulman and his brother, Nev, don’t hide their stance on the marketing of their new film, Catfish. A documentary about Nev’s Facebook relationship with (what seems to be) his dreamgirl, the film comes off as a thriller in its promo material. While not directly against the marketing angle, Ariel and Nev took time ... read more »

Note: this review discusses major plot points but doesn’t reveal the surprising turn. Much of what is discussed below can be found in the promotional material. Catfish opens in Philadelphia this weekend, at the Ritz East, 125 South 2nd Street. On Saturday, September 25, the filmmakers will be present for Q&As after the following screenings: ... read more »

Cora: Yeah, but where are we headed? Frank: What’s the difference? Anywhere. –The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946 The key to the shifty enterprise of adapting a work like the Coens’ Blood Simple (1984) to another culture is simple: take us there. Short story artist Ray Bradbury has noted that placing readers into a strange ... read more »

The first time I saw the memoir’s title, I couldn’t escape the association: the concept of “pray” following “eat” was made famous by the late quip-master, Rodney Dangerfield. The line surfaced in his act many times, but since we’re talking movies, I’ll cite his rendering in Stone’s Natural Born Killers, in which the comedian briefly ... read more »