What PIRATE RADIO does that is so remarkable is to capture as closely as a film can what it was like to be a fan of rock & roll at a time when it was considered not just noise, but actual subversion. Of course, in a way it was. This music was the anthem of… Read More »
MALEFICENT
There is an old saw about movies that goes, “Dont tell, show” and, alas, MALEFICENT has gotten that backwards. wtih an incessant, distracting, and otherwise unhelpful narration. Its an unfortunate irony in that the film seeks to inform us of the other side of the Sleeping Beauty story, that of the evil fairy who cursed a… Read More »
DELIVER US FROM EVIL
DELIVER US FROM EVIL is a curious blend of intensity and lassitude. Though rife with images of gory mutilations, animal and human, there is in its decorous pacing the whiff of the better Merchant-Ivory productions of times gone by, where things unfold in their own time and without any unseemly rush amid lush surroundings and… Read More »
TAMMY
There is a reason that the trailers for TAMMY show star/co-writer/co-producer Melissa McCarthy at her manic best. Those are, without doubt, the best moments of the film. Its not that McCarthy isnt equally adept at a poignant sort of drama, with which TAMMY is, unfortunately, rife. I have no doubt that one day McCarthy will… Read More »
THE DROP
There are many remarkable things about THE DROP, but the foremost is the way in which it so perfectly evokes its film noir roots. Set in the seamy underbelly where might is right and cops can do little but wring their hands, it is a world dark in thought and deed, where the wrong thing… Read More »
MAX
As an exercise in ethics, people have been known to ponder the morality of going back in time to kill Hitler before he rose to power and committed any crimes against humanity. Some though, to adhere to the polar opposite sort of principles that Hitler espoused, thought a much more effective way to stop him… Read More »
THE JUDGE
THE JUDGE is everything thats wrong with studio bids for Oscar consideration. A carefully calculated effort designed to hit all the perceived necessary tropes to qualify as both important and as quality. Alas, it is neither. True, there are excellent performances by Robert Downey, Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, and Billy Bob Thornton, but they… 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 »
CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES
A woman rises naked from the bed of her lover, dresses, walks outside and up the stairs of her duplex to spend the rest of the night, platonically, with another man. With that opening sequence of CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES, Eric Byler engages his audience from the first frame of film in a way that is irresistible.… Read More »
THE CONSTANT GARDENER
The difference in outlooks between Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) and his late wife, Tessa (Rachel Weisz), can be summed up in a conversation they have while driving on the squalid streets of Kenya’s capital where Justin, a British diplomat, is stationed. Tessa wants him to stop and give a lift back to her village to… Read More »
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