- Production
- Performance
- Music / Sound
- Flow
- Dialogue / Narrative / Story
Smoke
Smoke is a great film. At once engaging and often thrilling with epic stories and filled with narrative action, Smoke achieves its majesty in unusual ways.
Brooklyn Smoke Shop
This film follows the lives of a young man in search of his father, a novelist, a troubled daughter and an old flame all vividly brought to life through their connection with a Cigar Shop on a Brooklyn street corner owned by Augustus ‘Auggie’ Wren.
Harvey Keitel
Leading man Keitel delivers a superlative performance and fluid dialogue, realism & character shine from this great cast. Harold Perrineau, William Hurt, Forest Whitaker, Ashley Judd, Stockard Channing & Victor Argo take us on a fantastic story telling journey: this is an extraordinary picture about the glorious and rich intricacies of every day life – every character has a story to live, and to tell.
“The earth revolves around the Sun and every day the light from the Sun hits the Earth at a different angle”
Paul Auster and director Wang blend the essence of storytelling with the everyday dialogue, honest realism and engaging idiosyncrasy of great characters to seamlessly develop a film that watches like a great book reads; magnetic, intriguing, entertaining, emotional and riveting. Vignette upon incredible vignette and anecdote after anecdote ensure that you will soon forget you are watching. Perhaps the film’s greatest achievement is the complete absence of cliche.
Tom Waits – Bitter Sweet – Forest Whitaker – Intense
Sentimental without being nostalgic, gritty and realistic without being indulgent, dirty or cheap, philosophical without being intellectual: laughter, guilt, tragedy, petty theft, remorse, a road trip, $5000 dollars – this film will deliver everything you want and more. Highlights include the finale; a wonderful, bitter-sweet, silent, ‘Christmas Tale’ vignette to the delightful tune of Tom Waits’ “Innocent when you Dream” and a thrilling, intense, biting and edgy performance from Forest Whitaker.
Paul Auster
Where Auster’s “City of Glass Trilogy” proved that he could re-colour the detective thriller with an exciting, angular and bleached post modern geometry, “True Tales of American Life” that he could find the fantastic in the ordinary – here, for his first screenplay these capabilities are brought to fruition on the big screen – proving Auster is capable of writing the greatest American fiction of our times.
