Taylor Hackford’s RAY does what the best of biopics should do, tell not just who someone is, or what someone has done, but the why behind it all, in this case Ray Charles. Based on his decades of knowing the man himself, Hackford takes facts and mixes them with a healthy dose of poetic license… Read More »
KINSEY
KINSEY opens with the face of Peter Sarsgaard in close-up looking directly into the camera and asking questions of a sexual nature. An offscreen voice stops him when he uses a euphemism for a sexual act. No, says the voice that we will shortly learn is Kinseys, it wont work unless you are completely straightforward,… Read More »
ALEXANDER
As is true of his other films, there is much to be said about Oliver Stones ALEXANDER. Unfortunately, in this case, little of it is good. This is not so much a film as an amorphous blob that has suffocated the idea of a film somewhere within its vast and gooey structure. There is a… Read More »
BIRTH
One senses that in BIRTH everyone concerned was laboring under the delusion that they were creating high art. Let me put the brakes to that. What could have been an interesting consideration of love being stronger than death in more ways that one is, instead, an unpalatable trifle that plays more as a comedy that… Read More »
THE AVIATOR
Crash and burn is a painfully apt metaphor for the life of Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) as told in Martin Scorseses THE AVIATOR. We even see two such events in the course of its almost three hours of running time. Unlike the tidier myth of Icarus, though, Hughes story is more than just genius meeting… Read More »
THE WOODSMAN
THE WOODSMAN is the bravest film of the year, perhaps of the decade. Emotionally challenging and ferociously unforgiving, it is an astonishing work of surprising delicacy played out with the rawest of emotion simmering just beneath the surface. In telling the story of Walter (Kevin Bacon), a convicted pedophile, it demands that we look beyond… Read More »
HOTEL RWANDA
There is a scene in HOTEL RWANDA where Nick Nolte as a member of a U.N. peacekeeping squad, is explaining with more than a trace of righteous indignation to Don Cheadle, as the Rwandan trying to save 1200 of his fellow citizens from slaughter, exactly why the rest of world is going to sit by… Read More »
LIES (GOJITMAL)
Ah, sadomasochism, the gift that keeps on giving–welts, bruises, tattoos in all sorts of interesting places and that’s the theme of LIES, the latest flick from Jang Sun Woo, up until now one of my favorite directors on the world scene. But, hey, everyone slips up occasionally. For Jang its a particularly joyless coupling of… Read More »
MILLION DOLLAR BABY
MILLION DOLLAR BABY is a perfect film. Director and co-star Clint Eastwood has taken a story about people who live on the margins of life and turned it into a universal story about redemption and respect, and getting them the only way that counts, by being self-administered. The conceit is boxing, which Scrap (Morgan Freeman)… Read More »
BEYOND THE SEA
There is no doubt about it, Kevin Spacey adores Bobby Darin. He spent years pushing to get this biopic, BEYOND THE SEA, about the singer made, directing, starring, and co-writing the finished product. The problem is that Spacey is so wrapped up in his hero worship that the audience is left in the cold. Instead… Read More »
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