It’s a testament to just how good MARY POPPINS RETURNS is that the weakest part of this sequel to the 1964 film is the sequence with Meryl Streep. I hasten to point out the relative nature of the word “weakest”. Like everything else in this practically perfect cinematic exercise, it’s eye-popping and clever as the… Read More »
THE HOMESMAN
Tommy Lee Jones is a dour man, at least on screen. His carefully cultivated persona is a laconic one of few words and little patience. It is a character that he plays to perfection, and in THE HOMESMAN,he imbues it with a wonderful, understated quirkiness that makes his star quality all the more charismatic. As… Read More »
MAMA MIA!
ABBA, the songsters behind the soundtrack for the musical MAMA MIA!, play and now film, composed bouncy little ditties often revolving around a catch phrase or even just a catch word. Add safe, bubble-gum music and the results were songs that weren’t so much great art as something that would burrow into the listener’s brain… Read More »
JULIE & JULIA
If Julia Child had not chosen the right moment to powder her nose at an embassy party in Paris, she might never have met Simone Beck, and there might never have been the classic cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. If Julie Powell, at the end of a particularly trying day as a government… Read More »
IT’S COMPLICATED
Working from a slight script that rarely surprises, the superb cast of IT’S COMPLICATED make an otherwise mediocre cinematic exercise into something that, if not profound, at least entertaining, at times, even moving. Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin are Jane and Jake, a happily divorced Santa Barbara couple who have spent the last 10 years… Read More »
ADAPTATION
ADAPTATION is the story of one man’s epic quest to adapt the unadaptable. In this case, turning THE ORCHID THIEF by Susan Orlean, into a feature film. The problem is that the non-fiction book is a rambling account of a rogue orchid hunter with the history of orchid mania and a glimpse of contemporary Seminole… Read More »
THE HOURS
THE HOURS begins with a suicide, a famous one at that. Virginia Woolf with a fierce deliberateness puts a heavy stone in her pocket and walks into a river. We see her head duck silently into the water and then her body floating delicately away, pulled by the current with a gentle urgency. By the… Read More »
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE may be the summers biggest surprise. Its a remake that actually compares favorably to the original. Sure, anyone whos seen the previous incarnation will know a few of the bigger plot twists going in, but writers Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris have seeded this version with enough surprises to keep things fresh.… Read More »
PRIME
It is a testament to Meryl Streep’s stellar acting skills that she had kept her role in PRIME from devolving into a shrill caricature of a Jewish mother. And this is especially important given that hers is the only fully realized character to be found in this otherwise dreary excuse for a romantic comedy. The… Read More »
ANT BULLY
It’s very hard not to read current events into the story of the animated kid’s film, ANT BULLY, but that has as much to do with its dissection of human psychology as it does with this animated film’s prescience. Based on the book by John Nickle, it takes a look at the bullying pecking order… Read More »