The A.V. Club - Philip Seymour Hoffman

Film: Review:Pirate Radio

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:09:00 -0600

Do you like montages, but grow bored with the tedious plot bits in between? Then Pirate Radio is the movie for you. Set in 1966, during what an opening title helpfully labels “the greatest era for British rock ’n’ roll,” the movie takes place almost entirely on a massive, red-hulled ship that has been converted into a radio station for the purpose of promulgating the devil’s music to Britain’s unsuspecting populace, who would otherwise be limited to the rock-free BBC. Kenneth Branagh, copping Basil Fawlty’s mannerisms so blatantly that he should be paying John Cleese royalties, plays ...

TV: Newswire:Check out this exclusive behind-the-scenes clip from Mary And Max (starring Philip Seymour Hoffman)

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:20:00 -0600

So there's this cool claymation thing called Mary And Max that seems to be flying a little bit under people's radar. Below, you'll find a synopsis. Below that a behind-the-scenes clip that's exclusive to The A.V. Club. And finally, below that, a trailer with some actual clay people and voices in it. But where can you see it, you ask? On demand, via: BRIGHT HOUSE: Movies on Demand > IFC In Theaters CABLEVISION: Movies On Demand > Independent Films > Sundance Selects COMCAST: Channel 1>Movies & Events > Same Day as Theaters > Sundance Selects COX: Channel 1 > Movies On ...

Film: Review:Doubt

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:04:00 -0600

Adapting stage plays into movies is a tricky business: Fail to open up the play enough for a different medium, and it's bound to be derided as stagy and insufficiently cinematic. Open it up too much, and its essence may be lost to overwrought effect. In bringing his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt to the screen, writer-director John Patrick Shanley somehow manages to stumble on both counts: The film doesn't go far enough to transcend its stage roots, yet the few stylistic chances it takes—mainly in the form of tilted camera angles—are distracting in the extreme. Yet ...

Film: Review:Synecdoche, New York

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:07:00 -0500

Without question the most original and distinctive screenwriter of his generation, Charlie Kaufman offered a portal into an effete thespian's head in his breakthrough Being John Malkovich, but it's really the recesses of Kaufman's own conscience that have been explored in films like Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Now that he plumbs ever-deeper into Meta-ville with his directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, it would be tempting to peg Kaufman as a narcissist, receding further and further from the world around him. But the charge doesn't stick, partly because he's mercilessly self-deprecating, but ...

Film: Interview:Charlie Kaufman

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:03:00 -0500

In an age dominated by directors, very few screenwriters get singled out for consistently original work, and fewer still as frequently as Charlie Kaufman. Through his densely constructed, puzzlebox scripts, Kaufman expresses fundamental human longings through bold surrealism and dark, self-deprecating wit. After a long stretch writing for television shows, including Get A Life, Ned And Stacey, and the short-lived The Dana Carvey Show, Kaufman broke through with 1999's Being John Malkovich, a comedy about the discovery of a portal into the titular actor's head. He re-teamed with Malkovich director Spike Jonze on 2002's Adaptation, which converted ...

Film: Toronto International Film Festival:The A.V. Club At TIFF '08: Day 7

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:49:00 -0500

Gomorrah Director/Country/Time: Matteo Garrone, Italy, 135 min. Cast: Toni Servillo, Gianfelice Imparato, Maria Nazionale, Salvatore Cantalupo Program: Special Presentations Headline: The mafia ruins everything Noel's Take: If you've been watching cable TV over the past 10 years, you won't need this sprawling neo-realist portrait of modern Neapolitan organized crime to tell you that being a gangster is neither romantic nor all that lucrative; and you'll probably also be fairly familiar with Gomorrah's depiction of how unchecked criminality can stain every aspect of a community's life. And yet you've probably never seen ...

Film: Interview:Paul Thomas Anderson

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:48:00 -0600

Paul Thomas Anderson famously dropped out of NYU film school after just a couple of days, intent on beginning a career making movies. It worked: At 26, the writer-director released a remarkable debut feature, 1996's Hard Eight, which featured several actors that would become part of his troupe, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, and Philip Baker Hall. Anderson's real breakthrough, though, came via 1997's Boogie Nights, a simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking ensemble piece set in the porn industry. His even more sprawling Magnolia—another melancholy love letter to southern California—earned Oscar nominations and high ...

Film: Review:The Savages

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:00:00 -0600

"What do we do with Dad?" Questions like that are common to nearly every grown-up child at some point, when ailing parents can no longer take care of themselves and need some sort of intervention. And yet it's the third rail of American movies, perhaps because it's a sore subject for those who, for whatever reason—their jobs, their own families, the distance, or some combination of the three—can't give their parents the care they'd like. In her sure-footed comedy The Savages, writer-director Tamara Jenkins connects with this guilt and shame in a totally disarming ...

Film: Review:Before The Devil Knows You're Dead

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 14:55:00 -0500

In the opening scene of Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, Philip Seymour Hoffman lies back on a resort hotel bed following passionate sex with wife Marisa Tomei, and wonders how he can extend the moment indefinitely. Immediately afterward, the film cuts to a botched suburban jewelry store robbery, and then to the incidents leading up to that robbery, but for a good long stretch, director Sidney Lumet and screenwriter Kelly Masterson don't specify when in the timeline the opening post-sex scene takes place. Was this the moment—satiated and high—that well-to-do Manhattan real estate executive Hoffman ...

Film: Interview:Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, and Edgar Wright of Hot Fuzz

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:01:00 -0500

Most stateside moviegoers were introduced to the team of Nick Frost (actor), Simon Pegg (actor-writer), and Edgar Wright (writer-director) with the 2004 film Shaun Of The Dead, a funny, affectionate, slick send-up of zombie movies. But Frost, Pegg, and Wright have been working together since Spaced, a fondly remembered 1999-2001 UK series about a pair of slackers (Pegg and his series co-creator Jessica Stevenson) possibly destined to fall in love. The show, which can occasionally be seen in the U.S. on BBC America, relied on warmly conceived characters and a savvy command of pop culture, elements the team exported ...

Film: Review:Capote

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 13:25:00 -0500

At one point in Capote, Philip Seymour Hoffman's Truman Capote mockingly reads Catherine Keener's Harper Lee an acceptance speech that convicted killer Perry Smith wrote just in case he ever won an award. Lee is understandably horrified by the narcissism on display, but it's Capote's narcissism that makes her recoil, not Smith's. Bennett Miller's Capote is at heart a cautionary tale about the way narcissism can poison relationships and warp values. In Hoffman's haunting, dead-on Capote, it boasts an anti-hero whose self-infatuation borders on pathological. Sort of an alternate angle on In Cold ...

Film: Review:Owning Mahowny

Tue, 29 Apr 2003 00:00:00 -0500

In the fact-based Owning Mahowny, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Dan Mahowny, the youngest assistant manager at one of Canada's largest banks. A figure of few words and fewer distinguishing character traits, he's the classic man in the gray flannel suit–or he would be, if gray flannel fit into his budget. Taking frugality to its extreme, Hoffman dresses in cheap clothes, carries a tattered briefcase, and drives an exhaust-spewing car at least 10 years past its prime. Why spend money on such niceties, after all, when doing so would only cut into his gambling funds? As the film ...

DVD: Review:Happiness

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 00:00:00 -0600

Though Happiness opens with a series of scenes that, while funny and effective, suggest it will indulge in the sneering, obvious irony that weakened director Todd Solondz's 1996 breakthrough Welcome To The Dollhouse, it doesn't take long for the film to reveal itself as something better. Solondz's third film features situations pretty far from blissful, contains one character named Joy who lives without joy, and many scenes in which upbeat music underscores terrible happenings. If all this seems a tad too obvious, it should, but it doesn't stay that way. "I am living in a state ...

Film: Interview:Kenneth Branagh

Wed, 07 Jun 2000 15:00:00 -0500

As a rising young talent in British theater--first with the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company and then with his own (and David Parfitt's) Renaissance Company--Kenneth Branagh was viewed by many critics as Laurence Olivier's heir apparent. The label stuck once he entered the film world with 1989's Henry V, a spirited and audacious debut that earned Academy Award nominations for his direction and lead performance. In the decade since, Branagh has alternated Shakespeare adaptations such as Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet with a range of projects, some for Hollywood (Dead Again, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) and others ...