Nicholas Jareckis ARBITRAGE brings up an age-old question. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Only in this case, the world gained is not just a showcase home, a formidable company, and an enviable family life, its also an intangible thing made of high-finance maneuvers with no… Read More »
WON’T BACK DOWN
WONT BACK DOWN is a formula film laid out with the precision of a well-honed lesson plan. With a hard-hitting opinion about the current state of public education, and many opportunities for the two stars of the piece, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis, to go big acting-wise, this has all the hallmarks of the sort… Read More »
HYDE PARK ON HUDSON
HYDE PARK ON HUDSON is an interesting rather than a compelling film. Based on the recently discovered diaries of Daisy Stuckley, it tells the behind-the-scenes tale of her affair with Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Bill Murray), her fourth for fifth cousin depending on how its counted, during the tumultuous summer of 1939. The Great Depression is… Read More »
GANGSTER SQUAD
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but while GANGSTER SQUAD obviously admires Brian De Palmas THE UNTOUCHABLES, and tries very, very hard to be a variation on that classic, it does not have Mr. De Palma directing, nor does it have David Mamet writing the script. What it does have is a series… Read More »
BLESS ME, ULTIMA
Based on the bestseller of the same name by Rudolfo Anaya, BLESS ME, ULTIMA is a profound story told in a deceptively simple way. Deceptive, but curiously suitable for a film about identity, belief, and the nature both good and evil in all their guises. Set in the rural New Mexico of the mid-1940s, this… Read More »
SPRING BREAKERS
What is most interesting about Harmony Korine’s SPRING BREAKERS is the way it turns its imagery on its head while revealing harsh truths about the hollowness of American pop culture. Though the camera revels in shots of decadent excess, it never quite reduces them to mere cheap exploitation. Instead, by the end of this anti-fairy… Read More »
THE GREAT GATSBY
The Jazz Age was a time of excess and self-indulgence across class distinctions that was unprecedented. The scribe of that age, F. Scott Fitzgerald, poured all of that into his writing, along with a generous dollop of angst about what it all meant. His successor, at least as far as depicting that ci-mentioned excess and… Read More »
JOBS
Steve Jobs lived a life too full, and too complicated, to be fully covered in a two-hour movie. Hence JOBS, the first bio-pic of his life produced after his death, has made the wise decision to limit itself to just one part of it: the relationship the eponymous titan of Silicon Valley had with the… Read More »
ADORE
ADORE, adapted from Doris Lessing’s novel The Grandmothers, is a compelling, dangerous meditation on the stifling nature of convention, and the fluid nature of emotional bonding when societal norms are put aside. At the center are two lifelong friends, Lil (Naomi Watts) and Roz (Robin Wright), best friends since childhood. They are not, as the… Read More »
GRAVITY
Alfonso Cuarons GRAVITY is a masterpiece of both action and psychology. It is a film that sends its audience home with many things to ponder, and many lessons learned. It also sends that audience home with a whole new appreciation of air, and Im not sure thats an accident. So abundant here on the surface… Read More »
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