Jake Cole

LATEST ARTICLES ( 682 )

• Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga, 2011)

  

  Cary Fukunaga displays such an immediate grasp of the Gothic tones of Charlotte Brontë's eerie, macabre romance that the speed with which he loses his grip... Read more

  Posted on 11 October 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Ides of March (George Clooney, 2011)

  

  The Ides of March is a political drama under the mistaken belief it's a thriller. It film hinges on a Shocking Revelation telegraphed in the first five... Read more

  Posted on 10 October 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Melancholia: 2011

  

  Melancholia is so honest, so bereft of its maker's seeming inability not to burden his films with at least one huge, garish, self-consciously edgy flaw, that... Read more

  Posted on 09 October 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel De Oliveira, 2010)

  

  [Note: I am considering this film for 2011 year-end lists as it got no major U.S. release until this year.]My review for Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira's... Read more

  Posted on 08 October 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, MUSIC, TV & VIDEO

• 50/50 (Jonathan Levine, 2011)

  

  As I walked out of 50/50, I was struck by the realization that it didn't get funny until the protagonist got cancer. If nothing else, that speaks to the... Read more

  Posted on 08 October 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Pearl Jam Twenty (Cameron Crowe, 2011)

  

  Pearl Jam Twenty is fan service done right. Armed with such an avalanche of archival footage that one wonders if someone hadn't been filming every second of eac... Read more

  Posted on 07 October 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, MUSIC, TV & VIDEO

• The Circle (Jafar Panahi, 2000)

  

  The Circle may be the first prison escape movie to feature people who are all already out of jail. Its shifting narrative, which routinely hands off the baton t... Read more

  Posted on 06 October 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• American: The Bill Hicks Story (Matt Harlock & Paul Thomas, 2011)

  

  Bill Hicks existed and continues to live on at the fringes of mainstream acceptance, to the point that the titling of this biographical documentary seems less... Read more

  Posted on 05 October 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Moneyball (Bennett Miller, 2011)

  

  "It's hard not to be romantic about baseball," Oakland As GM Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) sighs near the end of Moneyball. Clearly we've never chatted. Based on the... Read more

  Posted on 04 October 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Record Club #6 Announcement: Agharta

  

  For the past few months, a group of bloggers organized by the inestimable Ed Howard have discussed albums for a cross-site feature called the Record Club... Read more

  Posted on 03 October 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Blue Angel (Josef Von Sternberg, 1930)

  

  What was it about the Germans that made their initial forays into talkies the high-water marks of the new format? If anything, the German film style to that... Read more

  Posted on 02 October 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933)

  

  Gold Diggers of 1933 bursts with such energy that it barely gets through its credits before Ginger Rogers enters in close-up singing a show tune. Read more

  Posted on 01 October 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh, 1939)

  

  It takes one hell of a star to embody an entire decade, but Jimmy Cagney moves through The Roaring Twenties with such energy that the title might as well refer... Read more

  Posted on 30 September 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks, 1934)

  

  Howard Hawks' Twentieth Century is so ahead of its time it serves as a precursor to two great types of Hollywood storytelling: the behind-the-scenes, referentia... Read more

  Posted on 30 September 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Brian De Palma: Snake Eyes

  

  Snake Eyes is, in a bizarre way, the logical continuation of Brian De Palma's previous film, Mission Impossible. Mixing political thriller with questionable... Read more

  Posted on 27 September 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Capsule Reviews: Lola (1961), Safety Last!, Parks and Recreation—Season 1

  

  Lola (Jacques Demy, 1961)If character dramas unfold in arcs, the lines of the people in Jacques Demy's debut form asymptotes. Demy's New Wave-cum-classical styl... Read more

  Posted on 25 September 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, MUSIC, TV & VIDEO

• Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen, 1941)

  

  With its tight running length—barely stretching to the point of feature length—and stripped-down visual style, Dumbo broadcasts the financial desperation... Read more

  Posted on 24 September 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943)

  

  Predating Arthur Miller's The Crucible by a decade, Carl Theodor Dreyer's own witch hunt allegory is not only politically braver—he managed to get away with... Read more

  Posted on 23 September 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Capsule Reviews: Red-Headed Woman, Waterloo Bridge, Fish Tank

  

  Red-Headed Woman (Jack Conway, 1932)"So blondes have all the fun, huh?" asks the platinum blonde goddess Jean Harlow, here sporting a wig so fiery you can... Read more

  Posted on 21 September 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Drive (Nicholas Winding Refn, 2011)

  

  [Note: this review is spoiler-free but I would still encourage those who haven't yet seen the film to go into it as cold as possible.]Having proudly managed to... Read more

  Posted on 18 September 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, MUSIC, TV & VIDEO