What is it? After months of hype and speculation, the J.J. Abrams produced monster movie Cloverfield finally hits the big screen and you know what? We still don’t know what it means. And that’s okay. From the get go this has been a high-concept affair – “Blair Witch Project meets Godzilla” – and it mostly delivers what it has been promising since we first saw the head of the Statue of Liberty come sailing out of the sky back in June. Continue reading “Review: Cloverfield”
Category: Films
Review: Fool’s Gold
There’s something about an underwater treasure hunt that gets my blood pumping. It brings out the pirate in me. Show me a film with promises of buried gold, shipwrecks and archaeological history and I’m first in line. Thankfully, Fool’s Gold delivers. Mostly. Yes, there are chests of gold and sunken boats but there are also a few too many coincidences, silly dialogue and some weak performances.
The film opens with treasure hunter Finn (Matthew McConaughey) and his partner Alfonz (Ewen Bremner) discovering the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle, which, we will find out, has been plaguing Finn for many years. Of course, we don’t understand the significance of the shard of a plate, not yet, but that’s part of what works inFool’s Gold. It’s a mystery and it takes almost the whole two hours of the film to completely unravel. Continue reading “Review: Fool’s Gold”
Review: Mad Money
Traditionally, January is the time of year when studios dump all the films they don’t think are going to do very well. With Mad Money, the new film directed by Calle Khouri, I’m not sure they’re right. But that doesn’t make it a good film. Mad Money follows Bridget Cardigan (Diane Keaton), an upper class housewife who needs to find a job in order to help stave off the impending financial doom caused by her husband being downsized. She starts working for the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City, the place where they destroy used money.
In the bank, she quickly devises a plan to get some of that money out of the bank, something we are told is nigh on impossible. In order to get her plan to work, though, she needs two more people, Jackie and Nina (Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah). See, Bridget has a theory, that “crime is contagious.” That once one person starts thinking about it, she can “infect” others with the desire. Continue reading “Review: Mad Money”
Review: There Will Be Blood
What was Paul Thomas Anderson thinking? In his new movie, There Will Be Blood, the auteur filmmaker is taking a lesser known novel by Upton Sinclair, Oil!, and turning it into a long, boring rumination on… well, that’s part of the problem, He never really gets around to making a point. Instead, he chooses to spend almost three hours giving us the life of a disagreeable wildcatter named Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) without ever scratching below the obvious.
The plot follows Plainview from his humble beginnings as a miner, showing his grit and determination through some fairly large hardships, to his success as a millionaire oilman and then to his fall, living among his personal demons in a beautiful house but away from the fields he knew so well. It’s a slice of life, certainly, but like a cheese pizza, there’s very little spice or differentiation of taste. Continue reading “Review: There Will Be Blood”
Review: The Bucket List
This is the season when realism gets thrown out the window in favor of extended metaphor. In the case of Rob Reiner’s The Bucket List, that metaphor is about living life to the fullest, no matter what’s coming down the pike.
Like a recent rash of films, The Bucket List is more fairy tale than anything else. In it, two old guys, Edward Cole, a billionaire hospital developer (Jack Nicholson) and Carter Chambers, a mechanic (Morgan Freeman) are thrown together in the cancer ward of one of Cole’s hospitals. That these two are in the same room should be a clue that we’re leaving the realm of reality and when they become fast friends, confiding in each other of the woes of their lives, we are firmly in the land of fantasy. But so what? Where is it written that a film about cancer patients has to spend the bulk of its time showing how hard chemotherapy is? Where does it say a movie about a serious subject can’t be humorous and light-hearted and still impart a message? Sure, that might sound more like a made-for-TV style film but the star power here elevates this from mere after school special to full-fledged feature film. Continue reading “Review: The Bucket List”
Review: Cassandra’s Dream
Maybe it’s just me, but Woody Allen has been slightly obsessed with death recently. Specifically, death with accents. Like his last two films, his newest effort, Cassandra’s Dream, concerns the moral and ethical choices we all face at some point in our lives. Namely, how far would you go to get what you want. And it takes place in London.
This time around, though, Allen shakes things up a bit. The most glaring difference between this and any of his other films is not only is Allen himself not in the movie, but it’s hard to picture him in any of the main roles. He’s finally made a film where not only has he stepped completely behind the camera in person, he’s back there in spirit as well, and the result is a gritty, stylized drama with bits of humanity so raw it almost hurts to watch. Continue reading “Review: Cassandra’s Dream”
Review: The Kite Runner
It’s a mistake to think that The Kite Runner, based on the best-selling book of the same name, is yet another entry in the current trend of setting films in the middle-east in order to give then some sort of social importance. As directed by Marc Forster, The Kite Runner is instead a rumination on friendship, loyalty and redemption which uses the background of Afghanistan to illustrate rather than define those attributes. Continue reading “Review: The Kite Runner”
Review: Charlie Wilson’s War
Why? Why is it that because we get Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, the proverbial Hollywood Prom King and Queen, in a true story written for the screen by Tinseltown’s chess club president Aaron Sorkin, do we think it must be socially important and award worthy? Add in perennial literati favorites director Mike Nichols and Philip Seymour Hoffman and the pedigree for Charlie Wilson’s War is impeccable. You might as well send the Oscars now.
Except not. Continue reading “Review: Charlie Wilson’s War”
Review: Margot at the Wedding
Look, I’m not going to sugar coat this. I hated Margot at the Wedding. From the opening, jittery, out-of-focus, poorly lit scenes which scream “I’m an independent movie” to the ending, which is so abrupt the audience is left sitting slack-jawed in their chairs long after the credits have started, this film just does not work. Now, I have nothing against indie films. I don’t mind relationship driven dramas or Nicole Kidman and I think Jennifer Jason Leigh is one of the finest actresses of her generation, but the script for this film gives them nothing to work with. Continue reading “Review: Margot at the Wedding”
Review: I Am Legend
The problem with I Am Legend is that it has no idea what kind of a film it wants to be. This isn’t to say it’s not enjoyable, just that it’s not nearly as good as it could be which is a shame because the source material, a novel by Richard Matheson and 1971’s Omega Man, are both well thought out pieces of speculative fiction. Here, though, the film never settles down into a rhythm and ends up leaving the audience unfulfilled. Continue reading “Review: I Am Legend”
Review: Juno
The cool kids in high school are never as cool in retrospect. When you think back on it, from an adult perspective, they were the odd-balls, the ones who did whatever they wanted, who didn’t conform to societal norms. Such is the case with Juno, the title character in the new film directed by Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking) and written by Diablo Cody. She’s cool because she isn’t a cheerleader or a bitch. She’s just this odd little girl, named after the queen of the Roman gods, with a step-mom and a half-sister and house phone that looks like a hamburger. In short, she’s cool simply because she isn’t. Continue reading “Review: Juno”
Review: Enchanted
In what seems to be a growing trend, Enchanted is the latest entry into what should soon be called “The Great Fairy Tale Revolution of 07.” Like August Rush before it, Enchanted makes no bones about its pretensions. Unlike other tales, though, this one takes its heritage directly from the source, deconstructing the Disney classic paradigm so well that if Disney hadn’t put it out, they would have to sue. Continue reading “Review: Enchanted”
Review: The Mist
Movies based on Stephen King stories are like rivers in the old west. You never know how deep they are or what’s waiting just below the surface. Often, they’re not very deep, choosing instead to try and slavishly adhere to the printed word. The results range from good (Kubrick’s The Shining) to bad (King’s version of The Shining). And then there are the Stephen King stories adapted by Frank Darabont. These are in a whole different class and they are very, very good. The Mist, the latest collaboration between these two, easily joins its siblings, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, as a film which out shines its source material. Continue reading “Review: The Mist”
Review: August Rush
August Rush couldn’t be more of a fairy tale if it started with “once upon a time” and ended with “happily ever after.” And it will leave you feeling just as good as all those fairy tales you remember from your youth.
The plot is simple: Eleven-year-old orphan Even (Freddie Highmore) knows his parents are out there somewhere because he can “hear” them. He is weird and bullied and determined. Meanwhile, we get the back story on his parents, a pair of star-crossed musicians, a classically trained concert cellist (Keri Russell) and the singer of an Irish bar band (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) who meet under a full, New York moon and spend one wonderful evening together, falling hopelessly, irrevocably in love. Yes, this is the kind of world where people can fall instantly in love and it will last an eternity… even if that night is the only one they have. Continue reading “Review: August Rush”
Review: Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium is a rare thing in this day and age. It’s a G-rated family film which doesn’t pander to its market. It’s the kind of film Disney should be making. As conceived by writer/director Zach Helm, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium is a modern take on how to keep alive the wonder and magic available to each and every one of us. And while it may not be original, it is fun. Continue reading “Review: Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium”
Getting the Hang of Thursdays 