Edith Piaf was no ordinary singer. She lived live at a fever pitch, driven by demons from her horrific childhood, and cruel twists of fate that together drove her to an early grave. No ordinary bio-pic would do to capture the essence of what Piaf was, rather than what happened to whom and when. And… Read More »
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
Danny Boyle’s brilliant new film, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, is the improbable tale of how innocence triumphs against the most seemingly impossible odds. It begins and ends on the fateful night when Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a former slum resident, plaything of an indifferent world, and current tea-boy in Mumbai, is about to answer a question on… Read More »
COCO CHANEL AND IGOR STRAVINSKY
COCO CHANEL AND IGOR STRAVINSKY is a lush yet curiously lifeless retelling of the affair between the eponymous duo. Each was the driving force behind a redefinition of art in the 20th century, she fashion, he music. Each was unswerving in following a inner muse that led them to unexplored country. The film about the… Read More »
ONDINE
Neil Jordan reaches deep into his Celtic soul and comes up with ONDINE, a dark romance that teases the meaning of myth into the starkly contemporary setting of a small Irish fishing village. The time is the present, but the location gives a timeless quality to the story of a fisherman who nets a beautiful… Read More »
ANIMAL KINGDOM
ANIMAL KINGDOM is a devastatingly powerful film with a brilliant performance from newcomer James Frecheville as J, a 17-year-old set adrift between a criminal family that he barely knows, and a legal system that until then has done a spectacular job of failing him. It begins with the camera drifting across two dead souls, the… Read More »
ANIMAL KINGDOM
ANIMAL KINGDOM is a devastatingly powerful film with a brilliant performance from newcomer James Frecheville as J, a 17-year-old set adrift between a criminal family that he barely knows, and a legal system that until then has done a spectacular job of failing him. It begins with the camera drifting across two dead souls, the… Read More »
EAT PRAY LOVE
EAT PRAY LOVE is a glossy travelogue of a flick, full of stereotypes and caricatures providing a colorful backdrop to Julia Roberts’ glamour lighting. Based on the book of the same name by Elizabeth Gilbert, it is the personal journey towards inner happiness taken by Liz (Julie Roberts) as she learns the lessons of the… Read More »
127 HOURS
Danny Boyle doesn’t make it easy for himself. After exploring the teeming slums of India with SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, he’s turned in a different direction with 127 HOURS. In it, James Franco, as intrepid hiker Aron Ralston, spends most of the film trapped in a sliver of a crevice carved very deep into one of the… Read More »
THE WHISTLEBLOWER
War is hell, but keeping the peace can be trickier. The clear-cut lines of who is the enemy and what it out of bounds blurs when the official fighting stops and, as in the former Yugoslavia, outsiders are sent in to keep the factions from continuing the hostilities. Such is the case of THE WHISTLEBLOWER,… Read More »
THE HELP
THE HELP, based on the novel of the same name by Kathryn Stockett, gently but firmly peels away they dry rot of racism that festered beneath the gracious, etiquette obsessed façade of southern gentility before the civil rights movement. What is remarkable, and a remarkably difficult line to walk, is that it does so while… Read More »