Email Author Aaron Hillis

2009 Stories by Aaron Hillis

• Sleep Dealer As Subtle as a Light Saber to the Face

  published April 15, 2009

  Science fiction easily lends itself to allegory, but while the dystopian near-future of co-writer/director Alex Rivera's feature debut focuses,... More >>

• In a Dream Captures an Artist and His Madness

  published April 8, 2009

  "I'm fascinated by giganticness," reveals Santa-bearded mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar, whose compulsive, nearly-half-century-long mission to... More >>

• The Pope's Toilet

  published April 8, 2009

  City of God cinematographer turned director César Charlone and co-pilot Enrique Fernández's modestly charming and wry... More >>

• Dragonball Evolution: A Cartoonish Coming-of-Ager

  published April 8, 2009

  It serves you best to not know a damn thing about Akira Toriyama's much-beloved Dragonball manga (or the TV series and video games it... More >>

• Bart Got a Room May Be the Year's Most Unambitious Comedy

  published April 1, 2009

  South Florida native Brian Hecker's uncomfortably strained directorial debut-a semi-autobiographical comedy about a high school senior who... More >>

• Director Mark Brokaw's Flat Spinning Into Butter

  published March 25, 2009

  At an elite Vermont college, a self-identifying Nuyorican student (Victor Rasuk) fumes over having to identify himself as Hispanic to receive... More >>

• Spring Guide: Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience Tries to Turn a Porn Star Legit

  published March 18, 2009

  Has the sinking economy driven Steven Soderbergh to direct pornos? Not quite, though his latest non-studio feature, The Girlfriend... More >>

• The Cake Eaters Offers Genuinely Sweet, Forgettable Indie Fodder

  published March 11, 2009

  There's no kind of wonderful in Mary Stuart Masterson's directorial debut, yet however slight her ensemble drama—about two distressed... More >>

• Explicit Ills More Sweet-Tempered Than Preachy

  published March 4, 2009

  A tender ensemble slice of inner-city Philly life to wash out the foul taste of Crossing Over's far more explicit ills, The Hottest... More >>

• Reunion Goes as Skin-Deep as its Screenplay

  published March 4, 2009

  Upwardly mobile dullards with unchecked superiority complexes, all members of an early-'80s Yale secret society, reconvene at the 10-year... More >>

• Portrait-Cum-Procedural Eleven Minutes Profiles Project Runway's Jay McCarrol

  published February 18, 2009

  Two years after winning the first season of Project Runway, flamboyantly charismatic fashion designer Jay McCarroll still hadn't... More >>

• Fired Up Incites Longing for Funnier Dignity of American Pie

  published February 18, 2009

  Getting high and mighty on teen-sex comedies is a sucker's game, but it's worth noting how particularly abhorrent a movie like Fired Up... More >>

• Someone Tell Elliot Gould That The Caller Is Frank Langella

  published February 11, 2009

  Co-written by French psychoanalyst/novelist Alain-Didier Weill and director Richard Ledes (A Hole in One), The Caller begins as a... More >>

• Oscar Micheaux and Black Pre-War Cinema at Walter Reade Theater

  published February 4, 2009

  Homesteader-cum-author Oscar Micheaux (1884–1951) was one of the earliest and most prolific African-American auteurs, but far more... More >>

• Push Is Less X-Men and More 'Why, Man?'

  published February 4, 2009

  Not to be mistaken for the acclaimed Mo'Nique Sundance drama, director Paul McGuigan's harebrained sci-fi thriller about young Americans with... More >>

• Luck By Chance Does Fluffy Bollywood Satire

  published February 4, 2009

  The Mumbai-based Hindi-film industry (or, as we've colloquially cheapened it, Bollywood) and its epically kaleidoscopic formula—singing,... More >>

• We've Seen These Shadows Before

  published January 28, 2009

  Currently a film professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Macedonian auteur Milcho Manchevski (Before the Rain) returns to the... More >>

• Dog Eat Dog Is Colombia's Post-Tarantino Gangster Flick

  published January 21, 2009

  Congratulations, Colombia! You've caught up with America's rich cinematic tradition and produced one of your own trashy, cliché-riddled,... More >>