Cinefile

Welcome To Nollywood

On DVD
Feb 02, 2012

Every week, approximately fifty new feature film productions are released to the public in Lagos, Nigeria.  Most films are made with a budget between $5,000 and $15,000. There are no theaters and no DVD players available to the majority of the public. All films go direct to VHS and VCD format.  Despite these micro budgets, currently the industry generates over $280 million (USD) for the Nigerian economy each year.

"Nollywood" is now considered the third largest film industry in the world today. Some estimates state that industry is in-fact larger per capita than Hollywood. In Welcome To Nollywood ...

Breaking Upwards

On DVD
Mar 21, 2011

Breaking up is hard. Twentysomethings who prefer to wing it as bachelors are largely motivated by this fact. Relationships can be great but when they don't work out--for whatever reason--the damage is irreversible. Significant others take a part of us when they leave our lives and for that reason we feel angry, cheated, sad or even dumbfounded that things turned out the way they did. In Daryl Wein's Breaking Upwards, the onscreen romantic couple is aware of the void caused by breaking up--so they decide to marginalize the pain by breaking up...slowly. Inspired by an actual experiment ...

Jane Eyre

In Theaters
Mar 10, 2011

Much of the appeal to Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre (published in 1847) comes in its episodic-like operatic fervor. As it moves through its topical sections, highlighting issues from class struggles to gothic motifs, there is a persistent sense of rejuvenation in the text. It's a rich piece of source material and it should come as no surprise that Cary Fukunaga's version of Jane Eyre is the sixteenth film adaptation to hit the screens. Fukunaga, the breakout director of the Sundance-winning drama Sin Nombre, brings some much needed freshness to an otherwise drained template: the starchy European ...

Win Win

In Theaters
Mar 07, 2011

Paul Giamatti has been pigeonholed into the lovable loser role almost by popular demand. It's the rare exception where we don't mind an actor to show up, hit familiar notes and add depth to familiar screen material. In fact, I sometimes find myself sometimes searching Giamatti's DVD filmography for his more offbeat roles in past films like Donnie Brasco and Man On The Moon just for a change of scenery. Still, the Oscar-nominated thesp remains a solid bet for getting us more involved in films that on the surface should be dead in the water. Leave it ...

The Adjustment Bureau

In Theaters
Mar 04, 2011

Steven Spielberg's masterful Minority Report was based on material by Philip K. Dick and the film explored the ethics of fate, chance and consequence. In that film, police officers were assigned to a "pre-crime" unit where they were able to pinpoint criminals (with cognitive assistance) and arrest them before the crimes actually occurred. Of course, the dilemma there is that since the crime never happens, are these people really guilty? It's an interesting crisis and now director George Nolfi (who wrote The Bourne Ultimatum) brings us The Adjustment Bureau, another Dick adaptation, which is a film that tries ...

Take Me Home Tonight

In Theaters
Feb 25, 2011

So many comedies which focus on a certain era try to bank on the ironies and now-seen hilarities that those environments offered. For example when it came to 80s nostalgia, Hot Tub Time Machine bursted at the seams with tongue-in-cheek winks and high-fives. Ironically enough, for a comedy about the 80s, most of its laughs came from the character interaction and chemistry as opposed to any of the period props (leggings, hair spray and tacky turtlenecks). So what's the lesson learned? Story always wins over spectacle. Flash forward to spring 2011 and we now have Take Me Home Tonight ...