Some of cinemas most satisfying experiences can be found in small, quiet movies. The kind that don’t bowl you over with strength of their story, but rather the subtle unwrapping of their soul. Films whose strengths expand on the accessibility of its characters thanks in large part to actors who lose themselves in their roles. Crazy Heart is one of those films and Jeff Bridges is one of those actors. If you’ve seen the trailer for Crazy Heart, you’ve sampled …
Category: Reviews
When in Rome is an absolute travesty of a movie and so painful and upsetting that a night of reveling in latex and sadomasochistic groin clobbering would be a preferred alternative to the sheer misery of this so-called romantic comedy starring Kristen Bell (Couples Retreat) and Josh Duhamel (Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen). 29 days into 2010, it is now cemented as the worst movie of the year thus far and easily the crappiest thing to come to multiplexes …
As a parent, there’s no prospect worse than that of losing your child. To have the soul you’ve nurtured from innocence to independence stolen– even worse, violently– is the stuff that inspires the inkiest thoughts of revenge in the most law abiding of citizens. How much closer to darkness would an individual be if they had the means and wherewithal to do something about it? Edge of Darkness wants to explore that grief-born fulcrum and a host of other potentially …
I read Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones in 2002 shortly after a close friend’s daughter died in a summer boating accident. We were both young parents back then – he with three young girls, and me with a four year-old daughter. My heart ached for him because, as a father, I could totally fathom the sheer and seemingly never-ending hurt flowing through his soul. Unexpected death is always a tragedy, but it seems the death of a child is …
Amy Adams’ (Julie & Julia) new movie, Leap Year, wasn’t even on my radar until I caught the preview while watching Nothing But Trailers on HDNet while I was languishing at home with some sort of Satanic flu-cold-sinus disease that thoroughly jacked up my post-holiday vacation. Honestly, even after watching the trailer it still wasn’t on my movies-to-see list and I figured it was coming out in February. It looked like that kind of movie. I don’t remember much after …
Robert Downey Jr. has become a force of nature. Once just a great actor, the dude has seen his career resuscitated into the open arms of an adoring public who now sees him as their cinematic best friend to giddily bury under spade fulls of lavish praise. If there’s any doubt Downey Jr.’s charm and dynamism will single-handedly open Sherlock Holmes to fat gobs of cash while allowing director Guy Ritchie a leg up and out of his London Gangster …
After months of build-up and expectation, James Cameron’s Avatar has arrived. Playing against its hype, Avatar isn’t going to change your world, but for 2+ darkened hours, it’s sure as hell going to rock it. James Cameron has delivered a visually resplendent, excellently paced and fully engrossing movie experience with his ode to 10 foot blue people and the humans who want to be them… or at least rape their planet. Avatar is a film built on the chassis of …
Five minutes into James Cameron’s new sci-fi epic, Avatar, I thought I had been transported to the George Lucas Prequel Tram Tour of Computer Generated Hullabaloo. As the lush forests full of giant trees and crazy critters passed before my 3-D glasses covered eyes, as floating mountains and towering waterfalls rushed into view, I sighed thinking this supposed breakthrough in filmmaking was another soulless love affair with CGI from an egotistical and nonsensical director. But I was wrong. Dead wrong. …
Oh yeah! Award season is here, which means films that weren’t released wide or screened to critics may end up on our docket. It also means we’ll be posting reviews which aren’t as “timely”. Instead of posting the full review and enduring the reprimands of the calendar conscious, we’ll post a cute little snippet. If you like what you see, you can choose your own adventure and click the blurb to read the whole thing. Or don’t. What do we …
Precious is an exercise in endurance. It’s a film intent to look you in the face with no intention of sparing any modicum of pain, hurt and unbearably selfish horror. Even the title itself is a tragic blow– a name with inherent meaning that’s been melted under the acidic wash of fate to become a mockery. And yet, it’s also a reminder of individually infinite value. So Precious goes: an experience almost wholly unpleasant but one where, by the end, …