Film Reviews - FilmBuffOnline

NYFF Review: REDACTED

October 9, 2007 Rich Drees

Brian De Palma’s new film Redacted is many things. Raw. Courageous. Disturbing. Brutal. Inflamatory. Bold. Uncompromising. Important. A plea for the soul of our country. Quite possibly the best film of De Palma’s career. Redacted [click for more]

NYFF Review: PARANOID PARK

October 7, 2007 Rich Drees

In many ways, Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park is a continuation of the themes and issues he has previously examined in 2003’s Elephant. Again we have teen characters with divorced or separated parents. Again we [click for more]

NYFF Review: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

October 5, 2007 Rich Drees

The writing and directing team of Joel and Ethan Coen are at their best when dealing with the subject of crime. From their early films like the caper comedy Raising Arizona to the Prohibition gangland [click for more]

NYFF Review: I’M NOT THERE

October 3, 2007 Rich Drees

Singer Bob Dylan once famously asked in song, “How many roads must a man walk down, before you can call him a man?” Writer/director Todd Haynes attempts to answer that question by showing us six [click for more]

NYFF Review: SECRET SUNSHINE

September 30, 2007 Rich Drees

Secret Sunshine is an emotional tour de force, taking its audience to the heart of a mother’s worst fear and then following her ensuing descent into a vortex of depression, denial and ultimately, madness. Recently [click for more]

NYFF Review: BLADE RUNNER- THE FINAL CUT

September 28, 2007 Rich Drees

Although it confused critics and audiences in its initial 1982 release, Ridley Scott’s science-fiction noir Blade Runner remains, a quarter of a century later, not only one of the most important films in the director’s [click for more]

NYFF Review: THE ORPHANAGE

September 28, 2007 Rich Drees

While the Japanese have certainly overworked the spooky-ghost child meme for all it is worth over the last several years, there is still power in the tragic notion of a life full of potential being [click for more]

NYFF Review: 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS

September 28, 2007 Rich Drees

Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s film 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days is a stark and dark look at life in 1980s communist-controlled Romania, a look more chilling than any horror film, as it is [click for more]

NYFF Review: THE DARJEELING LIMITED

September 27, 2007 Rich Drees

Director Wes Anderson seems to like putting dysfunctional family units into confined spaces and then sitting back to see what happens. The characters don’t have to be blood related, as are the inhabitants of the [click for more]

Review: DRAGON WARS: D-WAR

September 15, 2007 Rich Drees

“I keep trying to understand, but none of this is making any sense.” So states Sarah (Amanda Brooks), a character who is more of a plot device than anything else, expressing her exasperation at the [click for more]