People watch movies for different reasons. There are people who watch film as an intellectual exercise and those who go for entertainment value and nothing more. These two camps generally stay separated from one another: it is rare to see the average summer movie-goer at your local art house cinema but that is not to say that there cannot be an overlap.

Those who only read this site and do not know me personally likely suspect me to be a ‘cinema snob’ due to my predilection towards writing about independent and foreign film. I write about these films because I love the experience of thinking about a movie, seeing different cultures and hearing stories I have never heard before; I also saw the new Iron Man movie this weekend. While I did not particularly enjoy that specific film, there are instances in which I love the Hollywood blockbuster as much as the next guy. The point is that it is ok for a movie to only aspire towards being entertaining as long as it does so effectively. In a camp all its own is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, a new Swedish release by director Niels Arden Oplev, is a blockbuster genre-exercise aimed at an art house audience and it is a great success. Read More!

Joon-Ho Bong’s Mother is the second Korean film I have seen for a Folkways review; it left me just as impressed and excited as the last. The reason that Mother was such an exciting film to see in the theatre is because it was so genuinely surprising. This is a thriller with twists and turns which actually function as twists and turns; even if you think you know where the plot is going, you will still be surprised when it gets there.

Hye-ja Kim plays the title character, ‘Mother’, with hypnotic conviction. In the movie, her son is accused of a heinous murder. She knows without any doubt that it is impossible that her son could have committed this crime not because she has any evidence against it but because he is her son and being her son makes him infallible in her eyes. The trouble is that her son, Yoon Do-joon, suffers from some unspecified mental handicap and cannot even remember what happened on the night that the crime took place. Read More!

If you take the time to stop and think about it, the internet can be a terrifying concept: all the world’s information accessible in a public forum. This information is unlimited and people feel an inclination to share the narrative of their life with strangers. We have been turned into our own ‘big brother’, documenting all we think and do, not only with words but also with pictures and video We Live in Public is a documentary which examines this phenomenon through the equally fascinating and disturbing actions of Josh Harris: “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of.”

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Let me begin by stating the obvious: this is not a movie that will win oscar nominations, this is also not a movie that has an intriguing plot that develops the wills and directions of it’s characters, but this is a movie that you can go and enjoy, as long as you don’t expect any of the aforementioned statements. The movie’s visual appeal is the driving force for a motivated movie go-er to even consider spending money to see this travesty of a modern interpretation of a classic.

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How To Train Your Dragon is the best action movie I have seen in a long time; this came as a great surprise to me because when I initially viewed the trailers, the film appeared boring and predictable but as the critical accolades poured in, my interests began to pique. I thought that perhaps the film would work as an enjoyable rental or something to check out in the dollar theatre but the tireless exhortation of David Chen from the /Filmcast convinced me to drive an hour to see the film in IMAX 3D. As it turns out, this was definitely the right decision.
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