Mark Holcomb

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Seeking a Friend for the End of the World: The End Can't Come Soon Enough

By Mark Holcomb
Jun 21, 2012

Apocalypse movies are a venerable enough genre (and reliable enough as box-office cash spigots) to support a few lightweight, funny-sad-romantic entries every once in a while. Given the right touch, this approach can be just the antidote to the idea-free, effects-laden blockbusters and art-house pity parties that dominate the form...
Conan the Barbarian: Bloody Good

Pulp hero's reboot will slay you.

By Mark Holcomb
Aug 18, 2011

A cinematic reboot for the patron saint of 98-pound weaklings, Conan the Barbarian is both truer to the vision of its character's creator, Robert E. Howard, and more satisfyingly pulpy than John Milius' 1982 movie incarnation. Director Marcus Nispel, along with no fewer than three screenwriters, eschews the lugubrious mythmaking...
Buck: Horse Whisperer Speaks Up

Documentary examines sober life of a horseman.

By Mark Holcomb
Jun 23, 2011

The documentary Audience Award winner at this year's Sundance festival, Buck follows itinerant horse trainer Buck Brannaman as he applies his uniquely humane and frankly astounding methods in four-day clinics around the country. If that sounds as exciting as watching hay turn yellow, director Cindy Meehl finds the real story...
Incendies: War is Hell

A soap-operatic look at war's cruel ironies.

By Mark Holcomb
May 26, 2011

This latest blast of unwavering miserablism from Denis Villeneuve, Oscar-nominated and everything, reaches for something deeper than mere stroppy melodrama. Adapted from a 2003 play by Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies ("scorched") obliquely chronicles the adult life of Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal), an Arab woman living in Canada whose sudden death sends...
The Human Resources Manager: Compassion Meets Bureaucracy.

By Mark Holcomb
Apr 21, 2011

Tender irony and dark humor abound in The Human Resources Manager, Israeli director Eran Riklis' latest account of bureaucracy colliding with burgeoning compassion. This follow-up to 2008's Lemon Tree, based on the novel A Woman in Jerusalem by A.B. Yehoshua, hits the road when the restless personnel director (Mark Ivanir)...

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