Jake Cole

LATEST ARTICLES ( 682 )

• Poetry (Lee Chang-dong, 2011)

  

  Poetry, like Lee Chang-dong's previous Secret Sunshine, is suffused with cool blue, from the daytime sky to clothes to interior decorations. Read more

  Posted on 22 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, MUSIC, TV & VIDEO

• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher, 2011)

  

  Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is to sexism what Kathryn Stockett's The Help is to racism. Both work less as attempts to grapple with serious... Read more

  Posted on 21 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, MUSIC, TV & VIDEO

• Film Socialisme — First Thoughts

  

  I had planned to hold off on seeing Jean-Luc Godard's latest feature until I had caught up with the director's filmography. However, my Godard retrospective... Read more

  Posted on 21 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, MUSIC, TV & VIDEO

• Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz, 2011)

  

  Shot with oil-on-canvas-toned cinematography and dovetailing into so many random narrative threads that Laurence Sterne might have expressed his approval, Raúl... Read more

  Posted on 20 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, MUSIC, TV & VIDEO

• 2011 Movie Reviews

  

  Bellflower (Evan Glodell, 2011)The focal properties of Evan Glodell's self-made camera as seen in Bellflower seem to work not along lines of length, clarity... Read more

  Posted on 18 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg, 2011)

  

  Written as one extended climax, The Adventures of Tintin can be a draining experience, and one generally bereft of traditionally dramatic human elements. Read more

  Posted on 18 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Young Adult (Jason Reitman, 2011)

  

  Jason Reitman's and Diablo Cody's Juno showed a self-consciously "quirky" high-school girl growing up quickly to deal with an adult problem, her cloyingly quirk... Read more

  Posted on 17 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Interrupters (Steve James, 2011)

  

  Too many shots of curbside shrines litter Steve James' new documentary, The Interrupters. Too many goddamn shots of goddamn patches of decorated dirt with... Read more

  Posted on 16 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988)

  

  Pedro Almodóvar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is one of the wildest farces in the lurid melodramatist's oeuvre, even as it is also one of the leas... Read more

  Posted on 15 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Project Nim (James Marsh, 2011)

  

  James Marsh, director of 2008's spellbinding, playful documentary Man on Wire, initially presents Project Nim, the story of a mid'-'70s language acquisition... Read more

  Posted on 15 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)

  

  Asghar Farhadi at once places A Separation within Iranian social critique and moves far beyond it from the first static two shot that follows the credits... Read more

  Posted on 14 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• A Warrior's Heart (Michael F. Sears, 2011)

  Take the lifeless romance of Twilight, add two of that franchise's side players, then mix it all together with a family channel movie about lacrosse and you've... Read more

  Posted on 14 December 2011 MOVIES

• City of Life and Death (Lu Chuan, 2011)

  

  Few words are exchanged during the first 45 minutes of Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death, an account of the infamous atrocities that occurred with the fall of... Read more

  Posted on 12 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Niels Arden Oplev, 2009)

  

  I only ever saw a piece of Niels Arden Oplev's original film adaptation of Stieg Larsson's exposition-heavy bestseller The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Barely 1... Read more

  Posted on 11 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Best Albums of 2011

  

  I'm never on top of new music at the best of times, but 2011 proved an even more pathetic year than usual, with me belatedly catching up on every... Read more

  Posted on 11 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MUSIC

• Immortals (Tarsem Singh, 2011)

  

  Dressing up 300's presentation ancient Greek carnage with even more slow-motion, gore and fussy but meaningless art direction, Tarsem Singh's Immortals... Read more

  Posted on 07 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Warrior (Gavin O'Connor, 2011)

  

  From the second the camera settles on Tommy (Tom Hardy), a former Marine sitting on his father's doorsteps drinking, no one could fail to see that something is... Read more

  Posted on 06 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Gallants (Derek Kwok & Clement Cheng, 2010)

  

  [This film is being considered for 2011 end-of-year lists.]Like my favorite Chinese genre films, the kung-fu movie Gallants is as much a comedy as an action... Read more

  Posted on 05 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011)

  

  With its blocky opening narration and almost immediate diagnosis of hopelessness, Alexander Payne's The Descendants seems destined to hobble itself out of the... Read more

  Posted on 05 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Page One: Inside the New York Times (Andrew Rossi, 2011)

  

  Forget the title: Page One: Inside the New York Times quickly establishes a protagonist, and it is not the hallowed (and expensively redecorated) halls of the... Read more

  Posted on 04 December 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES