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”
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.
It’s a mistake to think that The Kite Runner, based on the 
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 
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. 
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 
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. 
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 
Once upon a time, in a horribly depressing place called Manchester, England, there was a boy named Ian Curtis. He had a few problems but decided to channel them into his music by singing in a band he dubbed 
Getting the Hang of Thursdays 