Email Author Aaron Hillis

2008 Stories by Aaron Hillis

• Aditya Assarat's Wonderful Town

  published July 16, 2008

  In its first of mostly prolonged shots, the coastal waves along the southern Thai ghost town of Takua Pa break over and over with the tragic... More >>

• The Human Condition Is Very Long

  published July 16, 2008

  Cineastes often share a mutual reverence for auteurist films that far exceed conventional running times—an admiration that might just be... More >>

• Jarek Kupsc's The Reflecting Pool

  published July 9, 2008

  Jarek Kupsc's investigative conspiracy drama wants to be this generation's All the President's Men, but instead of focusing on real... More >>

• Garden Party, A Squeaky-Clean Fantasy About "Struggling"

  published July 9, 2008

  A gaggle of unblemished Los Angeles transplants face a squeaky-clean fantasy version of "struggling" in Jason Freeland's trivial, commercially... More >>

• Afro-Punk Lives On

  published July 2, 2008

  You can't fault BAM for trotting out James Spooner's 2003 debut yet again for its fourth annual DIY celebration of black rebellion; the 10-day... More >>

• Wicked Lake: Attack of the Horny Horror Villians

  published June 24, 2008

  A cohabitating foursome of leggy lipstick lesbians—none of whom could act their way out of a sundress—trek to the mountains for a... More >>

• All In This Tea: Les Blank's Return

  published June 24, 2008

  As vital as Fitzcarraldo may be, Les Blank's Burden of Dreams—his 1982 fly-on-the-tree chronicle of Werner Herzog's... More >>

• Red Roses and Petrol: Fake-Irish

  published June 24, 2008

  Dublin poet and university librarian Enda Doyle (a deceptively top-billed Malcolm McDowell, seen mostly in camcorder soliloquies) learns that... More >>

• Life Beyond J-Horror at Asian Film Fest

  published June 17, 2008

  Forget about kung fu pandas and get smart: There's more to summertime at the multiplex than mediocrity—the New York Asian Film Festival,... More >>

• Homeless People Play Soccer in Kicking It

  published June 10, 2008

  Vagrants apparently don't need a home address to feel a patriotic duty for their homeland, or so attests Susan Koch's good-hearted but artless... More >>

• The Go-Getter: Hipster Road-Trip Redux

  published June 3, 2008

  Distraught over his mom's death, adorably awkward but soulful 19-year-old Mercer (Lou Taylor Pucci) steals a car belonging to plucky boho babe... More >>

• Take Out's Microbudget Realism

  published June 3, 2008

  You'll hopefully think twice before giving the Chinese-food deliveryman a lousy tip after experiencing a nerve-racking day in the life of Ming... More >>

• Sundance Highlights Come to BAM

  published May 27, 2008

  Ah, to experience the fruits of Sundance's programming labors without the Park City frostbite, deafening hype, and droves of industry... More >>

• Postal: Uwe Boll Rides Again

  published May 20, 2008

  Regurgitating Mad Magazine, South Park, and Borat into what he believes may be some sort of comedic super-barf, German... More >>

• War, Inc.: Iraq Farce

  published May 20, 2008

  Impassioned lefties John Cusack, cult novelist Mark Leyner, and Bullworth scribe Jeremy Pikser co-wrote this ineffectual Iraq War farce,... More >>

• Rambo Is a Pussy. Director David Gordon Green Is Not

  published May 13, 2008

  Before Hollywood snatches David Gordon Green away in a cloud of pot smoke, BAM will host a series of the auteur's downbeat, down-home dramas... More >>

• The Tracey Fragments: Snark Attacks

  published May 6, 2008

  "My name is Tracey Berkowitz. Fifteen. Just a normal girl who hates herself." Again leading as a deadpan, snarky, eponymous naïf dealing... More >>

• Talking With Winnipeg's Remarkably Well-Adjusted Guy Maddin

  published April 22, 2008

  My Winnipeg—Canadian hyper-fabulist Guy Maddin's time-out-of-mind "docu-fantasia" about his provincial hometown—makes its... More >>

• The First Saturday in May: Spellbound, With Horses

  published April 15, 2008

  Of the 40,000 thoroughbreds foaled in the U.S. annually, only 20 make the regal two-minute run that is the Kentucky Derby, a Mardi... More >>

• Young & Restless in China: Red Curtan Gen-Xers

  published April 8, 2008

  As China makes the headlines daily with each new threat of an Olympic boycott, doc filmmaker Sue Williams (Frontline: China in the Red)... More >>

• The Hammer: Charmingly Mediocre

  published March 18, 2008

  Former Loveline and The Man Show co-host Adam Carolla brings his self-deprecating, improvisational, regular-dude deadpan—as... More >>

• Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns

  published March 18, 2008

  Prolific filmmaker-mogul Tyler Perry’s fifth feature since 2005’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman (his sixth is already scheduled for... More >>

• Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns

  published March 18, 2008

  Prolific filmmaker-mogul Tyler Perry’s fifth feature since 2005’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman (his sixth is already scheduled for... More >>

• War Made Easy's Nopartisan Iraq-War Skewering

  published March 11, 2008

  With so many overlapping agendas between political critiques like Why We Fight, Outfoxed, No End in Sight, and... More >>

• Spring Film Preview: Harmony Korine's Odd Squad

  published March 4, 2008

  Maybe enfants terribles can mellow out: Writer-director Harmony Korine's first feature since 1999's Julien Donkey-Boy proves to be his... More >>