And so, after a gap of over 13 years, James Cameron returns us to Pandora with an introduction that posits the most dangerous thing about that locale is that you may come to love her too much. Cameron is quite obviously smitten with his mythical planet whose inhabitants, the 8-foot-tall Na’avi, are more in tune… Read More »
THE GOOD HOUSE
Based on the novel of the same name by Ann Leary, THE GOOD HOUSE gives us a year in the life of Hildy Good (Sigourney Weaver), descendant of the first woman accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials, and the most successful realtor on Boston’s North Shore. She’s tough, smart, and her family’s financial… Read More »
THE ASSIGNMENT
The subject matter in Walter Hill’s THE ASSIGNMENT will make half the audience cringe in a way that the other half, no matter how empathetic, won’t be able to fully understand. And that’s sly. This brutal exercise in gender studies, masquerading as a biting action-noir fable, is rife with irony and with bald truths designed… Read More »
A MONSTER CALLS
A MONSTER CALLS begins, fittingly enough, with a child’s nightmare. We don’t have the context yet, but the primal fear gripping the boy clinging to the hand of a woman hanging over an abyss neatly sums up the emotional journey to come. The boy is Connor (Lewis MacDougall), and the woman, as we will shortly… Read More »
A Choppy CHAPPIE
CHAPPIE is a cross between Pinicchio and ROBOCOP with a dash of DISTRICT 9. That last is unsurprising because CHAPPIE is the brainchild of Neill Blomkamp, and many of the elements at work in that earlier film about the meaning of humanity are at work in this one. The battleground is still South Africa, Blomkamp’s… Read More »
AVATAR
James Cameron’s AVATAR is a bold and imaginative vision brought low by a script that plays it very, very safe. Timely and environmentally apt, the rich creativity that is evident in the imagining of Pandora, the planet that is Earth’s last, best hope for survival, is juxtaposed with stock characters from Cameron’s playbook, including the… Read More »
YOU AGAIN
The splendid Betty White can never be more appreciated than for her work in YOU AGAIN. Not because it is a clever film that provides a suitable framework for her exceptional comedic talents, but rather because those self-same talents provide such a blessed respite from the wretched mess in which she finds herself. White, ignoring… Read More »
THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY
There is one overwhelming question about THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY. Why isn’t this a better flick? It certainly has all the right elements. The cast, led by Henry Cavill and Sigourney Weaver, are solidly committed. The story is the kind that Hitchcock loved. An innocent man plunged into a life-and-death situation not of his… Read More »
HOLES
There is an attitude among some filmmakers that children’s films should be anything but sophisticated, rather, they should be simple in theme and execution and excruciating for anyone over the age of five. Not just the flicks for little kids, either, as evidenced by such recent mush as WHAT A GIRL WANTS. And for those… Read More »
THE VILLAGE
About fifteen minutes into the M. Night Shayamalans latest effort, THE VILLAGE, I glommed onto the nature of the beast in the woods that menaced said community. Perhaps we as an audience are supposed to figure it out before the twist is revealed so that Shyamalan can get to the meat of the film. That… Read More »