Email Author Aaron Hillis

2009 Stories by Aaron Hillis

• Marc Feinberg's Poky Rom-Com Play the Game

  published August 25, 2009

  In 2007, Waitress established that octogenarian TV legend Andy Griffith still had game as a sly charmer, but Marc Feinberg's poky... More >>

• Fifty Dead Men Walking As Close to Truth as Earth to Pluto

  published August 18, 2009

  Canadian writer-director Kari Skogland's slick, soapy procedural—an unreliable adaptation of former IRA informant Martin McGartland's... More >>

• Robert Rodriguez's CGI-Overload, Shorts

  published August 18, 2009

  Austin's rebel without a crew, Robert Rodriguez works in exactly two filmmaking modes: fast, cheap, genre violence (the El Mariachi... More >>

• For All Its Fucking/Boozing/Fighting, Loren Cass Is a Radical Film

  published July 22, 2009

  Chris Fuller's powerfully unsettling debut—written in 1997 when the director was just 15—is a starkly lyrical portrait of angry,... More >>

• Blood: The Last Vampire Will Have You Ready to Fall On Your Samurai Sword

  published July 8, 2009

  After a couple weeks' worth of clever, what-the-fuck nuttiness at the New York Asian Film Festival, self-serious commercial pap like this... More >>

• Lingering Pauses of Lake Tahoe Must Be 10 Months Pregnant

  published July 8, 2009

  Coming down from the Saturday sugar rush of his 2006 comedy Duck Season, Mexican auteur Fernando Eimbcke's lovely, Yucatán-set... More >>

• Lion's Den Buoyed by Heroine's Nuanced Performance

  published July 1, 2009

  Pablo Trapero's unpretentious prison drama wasn't exceptional enough to win the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes, but what's downright... More >>

• Fifth Annual Afro-Punk Festival at BAM

  published July 1, 2009

  BAM's fifth annual ode to black power and DIY revolution blows out the boom-box with a 20th-anniversary screening of Do the Right Thing... More >>

• "Japan Cuts" at Japan Society

  published June 24, 2009

  Overall tamer than the New York Asian Film Festival's pop freakout (the two series co-present nine of their films, including must-sees like... More >>

• Local Color Talks About Art

  published June 24, 2009

  How is it that a film about the love of art can make art seem so detestable? Years before scripting Midnight Run and The Whole Ten... More >>

• Ocean Crises Lurk in End of the Line

  published June 17, 2009

  We're overwhelmed by crises these days (financial, terrorist, climate, mid-life), and, as if we needed to be depressed any further, each seems... More >>

• The Narrows Plays Name-that-New-York-Crime-Drama

  published June 17, 2009

  Tatiana Blackington's screenplay may have been adapted from Tim McLoughlin's 2001 novel Heart of the Old Country, but director... More >>

• A Conversation with Francis Ford Coppola

  published June 3, 2009

  Out from under the $25 million debt incurred from self-financing Apocalypse Now and One From the Heart, and so no longer seduced... More >>

• Meet Herb and Dorothy, Mascots and Great Collectors of the Art World

  published June 3, 2009

  Chuck Close calls them the mascots of the art world. Christo and Jeanne-Claude once offered them a drawing in exchange for taking care of their... More >>

• Offshore Isn't Potent Enough to Be a Lukewarm-Button Movie

  published May 27, 2009

  As if Office Space were remade by a TV hack who can't tell a joke, scored by an infomercial composer, and both produced and cast by... More >>

• Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight Anecdotally Strolls Through Designer's Life

  published May 20, 2009

  "I'm interested in work that doesn't exactly look as though it was designed, but sort of looks as though it happened," declares legendary... More >>

• The Wayans' Dance Flick

  published May 20, 2009

  The Wayans clan peaked with their 1988 blaxploitation parody I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. Their 2000 hit, Scary Movie, a parody of,... More >>

• Marlene Rhein's Self-Involved Big Shot-Caller

  published May 13, 2009

  Marlene Rhein's limp, self-mythologizing debut was "inspired by true events," the opening credit boldly shimmers, as if trying to deepen its... More >>

• Summer Guide: Surveillance, Jennifer Lynch's First in 16 Years

  published May 13, 2009

  Surveillance co-writer/director Jennifer Lynchundoubtedly has a distinctive artistic voice, but as the daughter of the guy who made... More >>

• Hustwit's Objectified Also Fetishizes

  published May 6, 2009

  Whether you've pulled this week's Voice out of a kiosk or you're reading this online in your (hopefully) ergonomic computer chair, chances are... More >>

• The Window Scrupulously Surveys the End of a Life

  published May 6, 2009

  "We'll see how it is after all this time," says world-renowned concert pianist Pablo (Jorge Díez) as he uncorks the vintage bottle of... More >>

• Marcia Gay Harden Concocts Universal Chemistries from Her Own in Home

  published April 29, 2009

  Set in Pennsylvanian Amish country circa 1969, Mary Haverstick's self-reflexive 16mm drama—about our evolving perceptions of where that... More >>

• Absolutely No Jazz In Jazz in the Diamond District

  published April 29, 2009

  Talk about false advertising: There is no bebop or a single blue note in first-time director Lindsey Christian's crushingly slipshod D.C.... More >>

• Let's Hope Malkovich Was Paid Handsomely for Mutant Chronicles

  published April 22, 2009

  Scottish-born director Simon Hunter isn't obviously related to his post-apocalyptic indie actioner's barrel-chested sergeant Mitch Hunter,... More >>

• Throw Down Your Heart Places Banjo, and Béla Fleck, in Africa

  published April 22, 2009

  It was The Beverly Hillbillies (or rather, bluegrass pioneer Earl Scruggs strumming its theme song) that first drew 11-time... More >>