If memorable war movies mean something to you, open that book to a new page and add "Fury" to the list. It belongs there. Even if you're not keeping a list, it's hard not to be impressed by what writer-director David Ayer, powerfully aided by star Brad Pitt and an exceptional below-the-line team, has accomplished with this bleak and savage story of a World War II tank crew operating in Germany during the last month of the European war. The advance spin on "Fury" has been, in the words of one of its producers, that it's "not your grandfather's war movie." Like most hype, that turns out to be only half true. In fact, what makes this film distinctive is the adroit way it both subverts and enhances old-school expectations, grafting a completely modern sensibility onto thoroughly traditional material. For though they don't necessarily act in expected ways, the five-person cross-section-of-humanity tank crew headed by Pitt's Sgt. Don Collier, a.k.a. Wardaddy, fits squarely into familiar Hollywood models involving men doing what men have to do because no one's going to do it but them. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
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Edward Albee's unlikely but brilliant play about one man's ill-fated love affair with a barnyard animal unfolds into a modern-day Greek tragedy all the more devastating for its sheer improbability. Director Ken Sawyer's staging is consummately well-realized, and the cast is superb, but it is Ann Noble who commands our awe as a modern-day Fury bent on a mission of righteous and appalling vengeance. (F. Kathleen Foley) (Ends Sun., Nov. 23) Read more
After the success of his Broadway adaptation of "The Producers," Mel Brooks worked with book-writer Thomas Meehan to stage another of his beloved films, "Young Frankenstein." DOMA Theatre Company's exuberant revival of this musical horror spoof, which closely follows the movie but adds even more Borscht Belt gags and splashy song-and-dance numbers, is a thoroughly entertaining romp, starring Hector S. Quintana as the monster who really knows how to put on the Ritz. (Margaret Gray) (Ends Sunday, Nov. 30) Read more
Wearing a loose-knotted black sweater that revealed his carved torso beneath, the pianist, singer and songwriter known as Perfume Genius sat before a whisper-quiet sold-out crowd at the Roxy in West Hollywood and tried to explain the raw, full-throated wail he'd just unleashed. Dubbing it his "general horror movie scream," the artist born Mike Hadreas had just poured forth during "Grid," a highlight from his new album, "Too Bright," and devastating as performed live in a room with so much history. It was a harrowing cry amid a remarkable set, delivered from the thin membrane that separates singing and raging, a place expertly inhabited by artists including Jeff Buckley and his father, Tim, Fiona Apple and the Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser. A realm that straddles an egoless display of creative emotion and uncontrollable onstage breakdown. (Randall Roberts) Read more
Have you ever tasted real paella? And by "real," I should specify that I mean not the stuff you eat with sangria down by the beach or even the lovely yellow rice with seafood that you have to order a day in advance at Cuban restaurants, but the real thing, rare outside its birthplace in the mountains outside Valencia, which is less a vehicle for costly ingredients than it is a big, shallow pan of methodically toasted rice. An alarming percentage of the best paellas I have eaten have come from the well-seasoned steel pans of Perfecto Rocher, a third-generation paella chef now at the new Smoke.Oil.Salt. He is a fairly spectacular creative chef, fully conversant with the toys of the modernist kitchen and a master of the 62.5-degree egg, but what people still talk about are his Monday night paellas; traditionalist masterpieces of a sort we had never seen in Los Angeles. Read more
A career-crowning performance by Sonia Braga is the highlight of this lovely, ruminative drama from the Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho, about a woman refusing to leave her home despite local pressure. (Justin Chang) (In Portuguese with English subtitles.) Read more
You can't name your album "Anti" without inviting your audience to think about what you oppose. So what is Rihanna standing against on her eighth studio record? A smoothly choreographed product rollout, for one. After repeated delays, "Anti" finally appeared online Wednesday night, first in an apparently unauthorized leak, then as an exclusive on the streaming service Tidal; Samsung also gave away a limited number of free downloads through a complicated promotion. By Friday, the album was available for sale through iTunes (where it quickly topped the chart) and Tidal, though it hasn't yet shown up on other streaming services such as Spotify, and a physical release date has yet to be announced. (Mikael Wood) Read more
When Adele sings on her new album, "25," about an emotional experience so vivid that "It was just like a movie / It was just like a song," she's probably thinking of a tune by one of her idols: Roberta Flack, say, or Stevie Nicks. But for fans of this 27-year-old British singer, such a moment could only be captured by one thing: an Adele song. With her big hair and bigger voice, Adele broke out in 2008 as part of the British retro-soul craze that also included Duffy and Amy Winehouse. Her debut album, "19," spawned a hit single in "Chasing Pavements" and led to a Grammy Award for best new artist. Yet she outgrew any style or scene with the smash follow-up, "21," which presented Adele as a great crystallizer of complicated feelings, an artist writing intimately about her own life (in this case about a devastating breakup) in a way that somehow made the music feel universal. Clearly, the pressure is on to duplicate that commercial success with "25," which comes after a long period of public quiet in which Adele recovered from throat surgery and gave birth to a son (and tweeted no more than a few dozen times). "Hello," the record's brooding lead single, set a record when it was released last month, racking up 1.1 million downloads in a week. But the song's enthusiastic embrace only underscored the other, more pressing demand on the singer as she returns: that her music still provide its trademark catharsis. Put another way, Adele's fans have been waiting for years for new Adele songs to explain their experiences to them. And they get a worthy batch on "25." (Mikael Wood) Read more
"The Day After" _ A bookseller deals with a new assistant and the fallout with his wife after an affair with his previous assistant. With Kwon Haehyo, Kim Minhee. Written and directed by Hong Sangsoo. In Korean with English subtitles. (1:32) NR.
Gone with the Wind was one of the most popular novels and motion pictures of all time. The movie, which premiered in December 1939, is a romantic Civil War epic in which the forceful and ruthless heroine Scarlett O'Hara and war profiteer Rhett Butler play out their tempestuous love affair against the background of the war torn South. This was a mythical South, where vast plantations were a way of life, with villas as old and stately as the fine families who lived in them. The novel has little to do with the Civil War and the Deep South, but is more a reflection of the real life and loves of book author Margaret Mitchell.
February 6 Blue is the Warmest Color (La vie d'Adéle) (France/Belgium/Spain 2013) 179 min. [IMAGE]Winner of the Cannes Palme d'Or, much discussed for its graphic lesbian sex, admired for its emotional honesty, BLUE is long and lithe. Yes, this is a woman-on-woman film, although in some way it is less about the facts of sexual pleasure than about the class attitudes that complicate that pleasure. Perhaps only the French could have filmed such a relationship, that between a free-spirited working-class young woman and the bourgeois artist with whom she falls in love and by whom she wishes to be mentored. The actors shared the Palme d'Or with the director, largely because their amazingly natural performances seem to have evolved organically in intimate collaboration with his own imagination. And perhaps only the French could have made a controversial three-hour film about sex, love, art, books, and food. Settle in for the experience. You don't see this bildungsroman stuff every day.
February 27 The Invisible Woman (UK 2013) 111 min. [IMAGE]Does everyone know that a 45-year-old Charles Dickens had a mad passionate affair with an 18-year-old? It's not what they tell you when you're studying Great Expectations, now is it? Ralph Fiennes directs himself in the role of that horn-dog Dickens, while Felicity Jones plays the object of desire, a lusting ingénue whose desire is fueled by her admiration of the great writer's talent and his compassion for the Tiny Tims of this world. The film's title suggests just how history treated young Nelly, who was deeply in Dickens' life until he died. She was his favourite reader and arguably his most intimate inspiration, but ultimately the guy got the glory and the missus got this movie, well over a century later.
March 6 Wadjda (Saudi Arabia/Germany 2013) 98 min.Arabic with English subtitles [IMAGE]How this hugely awarded film ever got made by a Saudi woman is a story in itself, considering she made it in a country without movie theatres. The name of the title goes to the ten-year-old at the film's centre, a feisty and determined youngster with a modest dream: to own a bicycle. Girls aren't allowed to ride bikes in SA because, you know, that could lead to driving, a definite no no. Getting behind the wheel could lead to Thelma and Louise and so what would all those Saudi men do then? So it is that Wadjda enters a Koran competition for the prize money. Her ambition and purposefulness are set against other older women who have clearly and perhaps even understandably capitulated to an unforgiving patriarchy. But like Malala Yousafzai, Wadjda shows the way of the future, one where stories like this no longer need to be told. Interesting fact: WADJDA won Best Feature at the Dubai International Film Festival. 2ff7e9595c
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