Blog Posts by Jonathan Crow

StudioCanal

Ben Wheatley's first feature, "Down Terrace," was a blood-soaked domestic tale. Think a Yorkshire version of "The Sopranos" as shot by John Cassavetes. That film showed Wheatley's knack for teasing out undertones of primal rage beneath the tedium and the sniping of a suburban home. The result was an uneasy mixture of kitchen-sink drama, black comedy, and gnawing dread. His follow-up, "Kill List," which was one of my favorite flicks of 2012, developed and amplified this queasy sensibility as the movie spiraled from domestic chamber drama to gory crime thriller to bizarro horror flick. The ending left me unnerved. For his latest film, "Sightseers," Wheatley delves back into familiar thematic territory, though he tells the story with less genre-bending, experimental verve than in his last outing. On the other hand, this film is a lot funnier.

Michael Shannon stars in the upcoming gangster saga "The Iceman," which opens this weekend. The film recounts the rise and swift fall of Richard Kuklinski, a Mob enforcer who by some counts murdered more than 100 people. As the body count rises, Kuklinski manages to buy himself a piece of the American dream: a nice house in the suburbs, daughters in private school, and a collection of snazzy suits.

Anyone familiar with his work in "Take Shelter" or, more recently, "Premium Rush" knows that Shannon is intense. On the screen, there seems to be a deep, untapped reservoir of rage beneath his seemingly calm exterior. Every eye twitch and grimace hints at possible eruption. And when that fury does bubble to the screen, like during the climax of "Take Shelter," it is positively electric.

Getty ImagesLest we be confused about the robot connection between the highly-anticipated monster movie “Pacific Rim” and the billion-dollar “Transformers” franchise, “Rim” director Guillermo del Toro has made it clear that his movie has absolutely no connection to the “Robots in disguise.”

Columbia PicturesLast year’s spring hit “21 Jump Street” had enough buzz behind it before its March 2012 release that parent studio Sony was already moving forward with development on a sequel before the film’s well-received debut and $138 million domestic box office haul

Finally more than a year later, Sony has made good on those early reports and according to Collider announced Wednesday (April 17) at CinemaCon that the sequel will arrive in theaters in 2014.

Sixteen Films

I was planning on talking about whisky, but Ken Loach was more interested in talking about the end of capitalism.

Loach is a legendary filmmaker in British cinema, known for his gritty, brilliantly crafted dramas like "Kes," "Poor Cow," and "My Name is Joe." He is also an unapologetic leftist, something of a rarity these days. His films are in turns touching, troubling, and occasionally funny, but they are all rigorously from the point of view of the working class.

This week, following the death of Margaret Thatcher, Loach issued a fiery full-throated indictment of Britain's first female prime minister, which garnered headlines and turned into an Internet meme.

"Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and destructive Prime Minister of modern times. Mass Unemployment, factory closures, communities destroyed -- this is her legacy," he wrote in a statement.

'My Brother The Devil' (Paladin/101 Media)It's a story as old as cinema itself: a criminal who struggles to shield his loved ones from the allure and brutal realities of life on the wrong side of the law. You can see it in classic Warner Brothers gangster flicks starring James Cagney and in 'The Godfather." Director Sally El Hosaini's debut feature, "My Brother the Devil," gives us a bracing new take on this archetypal tale.

'Upstream Color' (erbp)Shane Carruth's first movie, "Primer," takes all the paradoxes and mind-bending possibilities of time travel and distills them into one 77-minute-long head trip. If you saw it, you're probably still trying to figure out what that all was about. Carruth wrote, directed, shot, starred in, and composed the score for the movie, making him easily one of the most independent of all independent filmmakers out there.

Carruth's follow-up movie, "Upstream Color," is much stranger and more biological. If David Cronenberg and Terrence Malick ever got together and made a movie, it might just look something like this. The world that Carruth creates is as maddeningly opaque as it is compelling. This is not a flick that is easily summarized, but it centers on Kris (Amy Seitz), a woman who, after suffering a devastating if baffling crime, finds herself seeking out safety and comfort in the equally damaged Jeff (Carruth). But they both seem to be part of a surrealist ecosystem that involves worms -- which petty thugs use to create some kind of mind-controlling drug. And there are those menacing blooms of blue organisms. And a band of orchid thieves. And then there's that pig farmer who may or may not be God. '

IFC Films

Upon the first viewing, Stanley Kubrick's classic "The Shining" is completely terrifying, filled with images that brand themselves on the brain: That cascade of blood from the elevator. Jack Nicholson’s bizarrely monotonous creative output. Those creepy twins. Yet upon a third, fourth, and fifth viewing, the movie starts to become really strange. What's the deal with that dude in the penguin suit at the end of the film? And why is Nicholson reading a Playgirl magazine when he's waiting in the lobby? Rodney Ascher's entertaining documentary "Room 237," which comes out this week, includes interviews with a series of people who give wildly divergent interpretations of the movie.