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February 27, 2008
Boulevard of Broken Cars
Review of: Chop Shop
New York Sun
by Nicolas Rapold
Is it just that it's Academy Awards season, or could it be that eminent domain is rearing its ugly specter more frequently on the silver screen? Is it time we start a regular movie-review feature here at NoLandGrab?
Five years from now, if Mayor Bloomberg has his way, the area may well be a hotel and convention complex, but in the new film "Chop Shop," which beings a two-week engagement today at Film Forum, the auto-repair alleys and drab lots that make up Willets Point are the world for 12-year-old Alejandro. Rahmin Bahrani's follow-up to 2005's "Man Push Cart" could be the object of preservation efforts as a historical document, but his neorealist record wobbles as filmed drama, with direction and scripting that's at once shaky and insistent.
Posted by eric at February 27, 2008 2:06 PM