Posted on June 25, 2009 by admin
I saw this film by accident. I hadn’t seen a poster, a commercial or a trailer. I didn’t see an ad or a review. My boyfriend and I were looking to see what was out and saw it listed on one screen in the entire city. We looked it up, watched the preview and thought…
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Posted on May 19, 2009 by admin
A follow-up to The DaVinci Code, Ron Howard‘s latest outing features fun locations and gritty violence. This installment (which mentions Langdon’s past run-ins) pits science against religion, or more precisely, religious tradition. The Cern collider has managed to capture anti-matter, which was quickly stolen by an evildoer. Meanwhile, the Pope has died and the college…
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Posted on April 24, 2009 by admin
I was conflicted about seeing this film. I almost always like Clint Eastwood‘s directing style, but I almost never like Angelina Jolie. Eastwood’s view through the camera lens is clean and pure. It is like looking up from a book when you have been reading all day, and suddenly all the words that have been…
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Posted on April 7, 2009 by admin
This fascinating, well-paced and superbly-acted film has somehow managed to slip away unnoticed in the annals of classic film. It stars a young and cheeky Lucille Ball as an American chorus girl/hoofer in 1940s London. Her best friend disappears after answering an ad in the personal section. While questioning the spunky Sandra, Scotland Yard enlists her…
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Posted on March 1, 2009 by admin
Strait-Jacket is choppy, brazen and ragged. Out of place theremin music punctuates at odd moments - as if the sight of Crawford's falling face, starkly lit, wielding an axe needed accentuating.
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Posted on February 27, 2009 by admin
It seems every year the Oscars get further and further from the most deserving movies. Clint Eastwood directed, starred, and co-wrote the theme song in this quietly growling, gritty film. He plays the grumpy old widower Walt who is a hold out for his way of life. Often seen sitting on his porch,…
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Posted on February 19, 2009 by admin
This Edward Zwick film bases its main details on the true stories of the Bielski brothers. The Jewish family lived in Poland in the late 1930s and was terrorized by the SS. This particular chapter chronicles their decision to live in the forest (again) but this time as a community. They take in stragglers, older…
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Posted on January 15, 2009 by admin
This bumbling feature barely qualifies to be called a “film”. It is an animated tale about lizard-like people whose two races (one with wings and one without) have declared war on one another. It’s kinda like Pocahontas & John Smith meets Star Wars, with a little Lord of the Rings mythology mixed in. (And if…
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Posted on January 3, 2009 by admin
If you’ve read the classic short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, be warned. The wit and charm (and the major plot points) are missing from this melodramatic adaptation. The story was inspired by Mark Twain‘s comment that youth is wasted on the young. Fitzgerald took the idea and ran with it, and the film shares…
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Posted on November 15, 2008 by admin
The first French film to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes since 1987, this raw tale of a school year in Paris’ inner city pulls no punches. Francois Begaudeau penned the novel, the screenplay and played “himself” as the teacher, under the direction of Laurent Cantet. Filmed with real students, not actors, it exposes with…
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Posted on October 30, 2008 by admin
Guillermo Arriaga’s last project was the highly acclaimed “Babel”. On that, he was the screenwriter. His latest foray (after public disputes with “Babel”‘s director) was his directorial debut — “The Burning Plain.” Much in the style of his other works, this one plays more with time and linear storytelling than with disparate tales. Set alternately…
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Posted on October 28, 2008 by admin
The younger generation probably knows Malcolm McDowell from his villainous roles in the last 10 years – Star Trek, Heroes, Superman and Rob Zombie’s Halloween. A handful might know he was in the freaky classic, A Clockwork Orange. But before all that, McDowell was the it-boy of English film, starring in Cannes Palme d’Or winners…
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Posted on October 10, 2008 by admin
Based on Robert Parker novel, this Western manages to use the tropes of its genre mostly to its advantage. Ed Harris (who also directed) stars as the no-nonsense gun-for-hire Virgil Cole, brought to town to quell the unruly Bragg clan. His right-hand man, Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) slings an 8 gauge better than anyone and…
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Posted on August 15, 2008 by admin
There may have been a layer of unexpectedness which enhanced my enjoyment of this film, but I must admit it was highly entertaining. A little bit of Borat-type humor (“That is so wrong…”), Hot Shots goofiness, and well-planted dialogue combine to make a very silly movie. Hollywood makes fun of itself, on every level,…
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Posted on August 10, 2008 by admin
TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942) with Jack Benny and Carole Lombard Decades before Mel Brooks’ “The Producers”, Ernst Lubitsch directed this backstage comedy about Nazi-occupied Poland. Not your typical idea for a light-hearted comedy, especially in 1942 (production hadn’t even quite finished when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor). But Lubitsch (a German-born Jew who…
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