Mark James

Leisure

Tiny Furniture brings little to the table

Indie films tend to isolate their fans. While some audience members will cry “genius!” most will call bullshit. With her new production, Tiny Furniture, Lena Dunham has created a shallow micro-budget flick that, despite a few bright spots, fails to break away from the pretentious culture it came out of. Tiny Furniture follows Aura, played by writer-director Dunham, as she moves back into her family’s expansive TriBeCa apartment after her final year of college.

By December 9, 2010

Leisure

Fade to Black: Gazillion dollar baby

Next Friday, Disney’s latest mega-budget production, Tron: Legacy, opens in theaters across the country. Though it will no doubt please the Comic-Con regulars who have been fantasizing about this movie for years, with a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Tron will need to appeal to a slightly wider market.

By December 9, 2010

Leisure

Bad haircut, worse movie

Ed Norton, in full prison garb, walks into a counseling office. He informs his parole officer that he has found religion. Suspicious, yes, but it appears that his epiphany has some degree of sincerity to it, and Ed has become a new man. Sounds like American History X, right?

By October 15, 2010

Leisure

¡Ay caramba! Muchas peliculas

Between limited releases and an Oscar category that nobody pays attention to, Americans don’t give foreign films the credit they deserve. But not the American Film Institute—they’ve been offering D.C. an outlet for foreign films for decades. At the head of their current battle: the Latin American Film Festival.

By September 30, 2010