Any doubt about Shia LeBeouf being able to carry a film on his slim shoulders is put to rest almost immediately after DISTURBIA begins. It’s right after the traffic accident in which his character, Kale, is injured and his father killed. After Kale drags himself from the wreckage, he looks back into what’s left of… Read More »
FRACTURE
Hubris, as the ancient Greeks were oft wont to mull in their plays and myths, is a fatal flaw. It’s the one that the gods of those self same ancient Greeks couldn’t abide and hence, the one that got them interested in smiting the one showing it. FRACTURE is a film that would warm the… Read More »
MR. BROOKS
According to some, we live in an age of moral relativism, and Mr. Brooks, a clever script with mediocre performances, explores that concept with nicely honed dash of irony. Our anti-hero, the eponymous Mr. Brooks, aka Earl, is affluent, pro-life, pro-family, and so devoted to his wife (Marg Helgenberger) and daughter (Danielle Panabaker) that the… Read More »
RENAISSANCE
RENAISSANCE is a film that can be appreciated, idolized even, for its stunning visual artistry, as well as admired for its unsentimental homage to the film noir genre it reproduces with such precision. Relying neither on the gimmick of having the motion-capture animation reduced to only black and white, this is not cinematic stunt rather… Read More »
DISTURBIA — DVD
Of the many things to admire about DISTURBIA, Shia LeBeouf not being the least among them, the way that the screenwriters (Christopher B. Landon and Carl Ellsworth) successfully re-imagined the Hitchcock classic, REAR WINDOW is pretty darned amazing. It’s the sunny suburbs rather than a noirsh big city. It’s a troubled kid instead of a… Read More »
EASTERN PROMISES
EASTERN PROMISES is a gloriously dark and compelling thriller that plays cat and mouse with its audience the way that the characters involved play cat and mouse with each other. The tension, though, in this well-plotted suspense yarn arises not so much from the evil that the villains purvey, it’s the way that the underworld… Read More »
FLAWLESS
FLAWLESS is a classy, smart, and fiendishly sly piece of filmmaking that keeps the audience on the edge of its seat. There are herrings aplenty here, red and other, courtesy of writer Edward Andersen, who has a knack for subverting audience expectations by neatly playing into them. Cool and crisp direction by Michael Radford takes… Read More »
88 MINUTES
I wonder if any one has done a study to pinpoint the exact moment when Al Pacino gave up any attempt to continue being a serious actor and began regularly phoning it in. His latest, 88 MINUTES, is another in a series of roles in which he is genially disengaged, giving only the most perfunctory… Read More »
BURIED
It would be easy, and a huge mistake, to dismiss BURIED as a stunt film. Sure, Ryan Reynolds spends the entire 94 minutes of the running time buried underground in a box, but such is the imaginative take on the subject by screenwriter Chris Sparling and director Roderigo Cortes, that the struggle of one confined… Read More »
STONE
There is a tragic irony in STONE. Specifically, that Jack Mabry (Robert de Niro) has spent his professional life listening to convicts as they make their case for parole, and yet, he has never really heard any of them. He thinks hes wise to the lies they tell in order to be free once again.… Read More »