With A SEPARATION, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi has taken the most ordinary of stories, played out by the most ordinary of people, and created an extraordinary work about the tangential relationship between justice and the law, honesty and truth. How good intentions can go horribly wrong, and because of them, the most considered, logical lie… Read More »
FINAL CUT, THE
There is something disconcerting to have a life summed up in the number of hours lived, or to have scenes from that life played out with subtitle indicating the persons name and age, age in years, months and hours. It those moments that provide the grist for THE FINAL CUTs mill, a film that takes… Read More »
THE GRUDGE
THE GRUDGE is that annoying blend of genuine scares and really, really dumb people. Sure, in order for most horror films to work, the principals have to be of the less than Einstein variety, lest they run screaming from the nasty whatever and end the proceedings in reel one. One, therefore, makes allowances, but suspension… Read More »
DARK WATER
Anyone who has had to deal with the terrors of a leaky roof or faulty plumbing will find much to raise goosebumps, to cause the averting of the eyes, and, perhaps, to inspire one or two flashbacks to those unfortunate interludes while viewing DARK WATER. And if this were the intent of the makers of… Read More »
RUMOR HAS IT
RUMOR HAS IT, a dreary pseudo-sequel to 1968’s THE GRADUATE, tacks uncertainly between the far-fetched and the cliché as it hedges its bets rather than sharpens its claws with a story that dishonors the memory of that iconic classic. The action picks up in 1997 when Sarah (Jennifer Anniston) flies home from New York for… Read More »
THE MESSENGERS
There is much to be said for letting a horror film build slowly. The audience moves from the everyday world into one where the unknown lurks with intentions that seem anything but friendly. And so it is with THE MESSENGERS, the latest from the Pang Brothers, a duo that can make an empty room seem like the maw of hell using little… Read More »
THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB
At one point during THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, based on the novel by Karen Joy Fowler, one member of the eponymous club watches another burst into tears and run into another room over an Austenian point. “Reading Jane Austen is a minefield” she opines, and so it is. Not because the subject matter of… 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 »