Director Benson Lee brings contemporary break-dance culture to the big screen once again. Only this time, it is a fictionalized version of his 2008 documentary, Planet B-Boy, with some big names hopping on the break-dance train. In Lee’s latest fictional 3D break-dancing movie, Battle of the Year (2013) actors Josh Holloway, Laz Alonso, Josh Peck, […]
In the prison system, punishment and rehabilitation go hand in hand. It’s hard not to picture convicted criminals as dangerous people who cannot change. This bad-to-the-bone image strips prisoners of their humanity. Lisa R. Cohen’s film Serving Life (2011), a documentary originally produced for the Oprah Winfrey Network, smashes these stereotypes by introducing audiences to a […]
J Roddy Walston and The Business refuse to play it safe. In this age when mobile phone apps have replaced recording studios and the term “badass” rarely describes modern music, J Roddy furthers the proud legacy of unrelenting rockers from Little Richard to Janis Joplin to KISS, shredding eardrums and stirring souls with scrappy, All-American […]
Indie filmmakers take one of two routes with no-budget features. They can do their own thing (Clerks, Buffalo 66, other defining films of the US indie explosion) or they can do Hollywood on no budget (Monsters, El Mariachi, Paranormal Activity) and try their best to do it so well that nobody really notices the difference. […]
I wasn’t greatly impressed with the first hour or so of Olivier Assayas’ Après mai. Despite being roughly based on the French director’s teenage years, there’s a sketchiness to its ensemble of young characters that keeps the director’s remarkably rich evocation of early-1970s Europe from feeling weighted with the emotional investment of (semi)autobiography. But by […]
Director Benson Lee brings contemporary break-dance culture to the big screen once again. Only this time, it is a fictionalized version of his 2008 documentary, Planet B-Boy, with some big names hopping on the break-dance train. In Lee’s latest fictional 3D break-dancing movie, Battle of the Year (2013) actors Josh Holloway, Laz Alonso, Josh Peck, […] 