There are so many remarkable things about Tamara Jenkins’ THE SAVAGES that it’s hard to know where to start. The masterful performances are a given by pros Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Jon and Wendy, siblings uncomfortable with the idea of family. There is also a subtly optimistic script about the end of… Read More »
CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR
Based on actual events, CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR tells the unlikely story of one even more unlikely man on a mission to make the world a better place. It’s a smart film, slickly done, with a disarming insouciance that belies the devastating political story it tells. Aaron Sorkin has taken the facts and with Mike Nichols… Read More »
CHAOS THEORY
CHAOS THEORY is a torpid piece of filmmaking that is at once a fluffy drama and a dreary comedy. Like its hero, Frank (Ryan Reynolds), it’s decided never to make a definite decision and the shambles that results is as predictable as the story of which it is part. The story is told in flashback,… Read More »
DEAL
There is more complexity in a sub-par episode of the Teletubbies than in anything to be found in DEAL, a Burt Reynolds vehicle that far from heralding his comeback may be his swan song as a bankable actor. This criminally trite bit of filmmaking never quite got past the original concept that seems to have… Read More »
ANTON CHEKHOV’S THE DUEL
A learned man with a small mind munches a banana while explaining the theory of evolution, totally unaware of the irony. It is one of the finer examples of how screenwriter Mary Bing has distilled the essence of Anton Chekhov in her engrossing adaptation of his novella, THE DUEL. The arch ironies, the piquant comedy,… Read More »
WIN WIN
WIN WIN presents Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), a decent man and an honest lawyer beetling through life with financial worries that he meticulously keeps from his adored family. Keeping it in has given him episodes that arent quite heart attacks, but are enough to alarm his best friend, Terry (Bobby Canavale), into calling an ambulance.… Read More »
WIN WIN
WIN WIN presents Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), a decent man and an honest lawyer beetling through life with financial worries that he meticulously keeps from his adored family. Keeping it in has given him episodes that arent quite heart attacks, but are enough to alarm his best friend, Terry (Bobby Canavale), into calling an ambulance.… 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 »
FRIENDS WITH KIDS
Best friends Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt) and Jason (Adam Scott) think they have it all figured out when it comes to having it all. Having seen the toll that the introduction of childbearing has taken on the relationships of their hip and ecstatically happy married friends, they turn cerebral about the most primal of instincts and… Read More »
FOR A GOOD TIME CALL . . .
It was once written, in far less enlightened times, that when a man marries, one part of his life changes, but when a woman marries, it is her whole life that is changed. Despite significant, if not total, gains in the social and economic equality department between men and women, when it comes to romance,… Read More »