The ultimate test of a films potency comes not when a story with its twists and turns forges new trails into unfamiliar terrain. The ultimate test may very well be if a film can take a familiar tale and make it suspenseful. WARRIOR does just that. The loosely woven story takes on not one, but… Read More »
ANONYMOUS
ANONYMOUS has a great many things going for it. A rich and suitably literate script by John Orloff. A director, Roland Emmerich, with a flair for the dramatic that meshes well with the intrigues of Elizabethan England. A special effects budget that allows the screen to be filled with vast panoramas of 16th-century London, as… Read More »
A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS
With some films, the 3-D effect is tacked on to generate a few extra bucks at the box office. And then there are the ones like A VERY HAROLD AND KUMAR 3-D CHRISTMAS. The wisps of smoke coming off those funny cigarettes so dear to the title characters hearts become prehensile as they float off… 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 »
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 »
MY WEEK WITH MARILYN
The single biggest hurdle in MY WEEK WITH MARILYN is how believable the actor impersonating the icon is. For the first few minutes, there is the inevitable comparison. MM’s nose wasn’t exactly like that. Her figure was slightly different. The shape of the face is off. Yet within no more than 10 minutes, and probably… Read More »
YOUNG ADULT
The key to YOUNG ADULT’s protagonist, Mavis Gray, is her response to a particular question. Appearing bedraggled and wine-stained on the doorstep of her human doormat, Matt Freehauf, she is asked by him what happened. The audience knows she has been devastated by having her illusions taken from her. Her answer, though, eschews that. Instead,… Read More »
PINA
Just as the subject of his film, Pina Bausch, broke new ground in defining dance, so Wim Wenders has broken new ground in bringing Pinas remarkable choreography to the screen. Wenders, the author of such sublime, emotionally resonant films as WINGS OF DESIRE and PARIS, TEXAS, as well as the documentary, THE BUENA VISTA SOCIAL… Read More »
ALBERT NOBBS
This is how good Glenn Close is as the eponymous ALBERT NOBBS. At one point her character, who has lived as a man for decades in Victorian Ireland, dons a dress for an outing to the beach and it just looks wrong. Close, the epitome of feminine elegance, doesnt clomp around, nor does she become… Read More »
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