Review: Noah

noahWalking out of NoahDarren Aronofsky‘s new film about the biblical seaman who saved 2 of every living creature so he could replenish the Earth after it was laid waste by god’s vengeance I thought if I had to describe the film in one word, that word would be “ic.” As a film, the music was bombastIC, the storytelling was didactIC and the overall filmmaking pedantIC. So yeah, -ic would be a good way to describe it. This is certainly not what I was expecting from the director of Black Swan or Requiem for a Dream. Granted, I wasn’t expecting much, but this was even less than that.

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Review: The Bling Ring

Not sure about this latest offering from Sofia Coppola. The story, a “ripped from the headlines” tale of suburban LA kids robbing the homes of the rich and famous in order to get their hands on lingerie and, ostensibly, to have some of the fame rub off on them, is interesting in and of itself, but Coppola’s dramatization of it is a little shallow.

Of course, therein lay my uncertainty. Coppola is a very talented filmmaker and it’s not like her to leave this story unexamined the way she does, but then, maybe that was her point – there really was nothing more to the “villains” than what you see. Maybe “The Bling Ring” really were just a group of spoiled kids, out of touch with reality and obsessed with celebrity culture to the point that they considered the people they saw on the magazines as unreal personifications of their own desires and therefore, whatever the rich and famous had should be shared equally and fairly.  Continue reading “Review: The Bling Ring”