THE HUNGER GAMES may be based on a wildly popular young adult series of novels, but the film adaptations have always tackled issues that are powerfully adult and presented as such. Set in an unspecified future, the class system has run so wild that the life and death of the proletariat class has become institutionalized… Read More »
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY — PART 1
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY — PART 1 is not unlike its iconic heroine, Katniss Everdeen. It’s bold, headstrong, no-nonsense, and impatient to get on with things. It begins almost directly from whence the last installment of the saga left off, and with little if any exposition about anything that happened before. For example, why those… Read More »
PIRATE RADIO
What PIRATE RADIO does that is so remarkable is to capture as closely as a film can what it was like to be a fan of rock & roll at a time when it was considered not just noise, but actual subversion. Of course, in a way it was. This music was the anthem of… Read More »
THE IDES OF MARCH
THE IDES OF MARCH is a suitably Machiavellian portrait of how politics works. Not in the bastardized sense of ruthlessness for ruthlessness sake, but rather in the classical Machiavellian sense, ruthlessness to manage any given situation in order to achieve ones goals while making as little fuss with the population at large as possible. In… Read More »
A MOST WANTED MAN
A MOST WANTED MAN evokes the best of the Cold War thrillers of the 1960s. Hardly a surprise, considering its based on a novel by the master of that genre, John le Carre. Directed with that genres same sense of understated, but lethal, suspense borne of uncertainty by Anton Corbijn it updates the action from… Read More »
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3 asks the cinematic question, “Why wander away inconspicuously from the scene of the latest mission when you can speed away at full throttle on the Tiber River?” It’s a spy fantasy and the answers to questions like that, and there are lots of them throughout the needless running time of over two hours,… Read More »
THE SAVAGES
There are so many remarkable things about Tamara Jenkins’ THE SAVAGES that it’s hard to know where to start. The masterful performances are a given by pros Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Jon and Wendy, siblings uncomfortable with the idea of family. There is also a subtly optimistic script about the end of… Read More »
CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR
Based on actual events, CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR tells the unlikely story of one even more unlikely man on a mission to make the world a better place. It’s a smart film, slickly done, with a disarming insouciance that belies the devastating political story it tells. Aaron Sorkin has taken the facts and with Mike Nichols… Read More »
MONEYBALL
The starring role in MONEYBALL is not a showy one. Rather it requires of the actor playing it to posses a consummate skill in inhabiting a character rather than merely playing one. Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland A’s must be all things to all people, low-key and cool as he is glad-handing… Read More »