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Recent Reviews
- Good Kill – An artistic exploration of drone assassinations
- Citizenfour – a fascinating and important topic, but a disappointing documentary
- Interstellar – Probably the best film of the year, certainly the most enjoyable!
- Laggies – a delightful little film about late-blooming misfits
- Two Days, One Night – it’s (almost) exactly what you expect it to be
- Whiplash – a disgusting, stupidly manipulative piece of absurdity.
- Still Alice – big stars, big production, but still just a Hallmark movie of the week
- Wild – it’s surprisingly well-made and fun to watch
- Black Sea – diverting, but sadly predictable
- Birdman (Or the Expected Emptiness of Pretension)
- Mr. Turner – Planet of the Ape
- The Imitation Game – It’s an abomination
- A Brief Word on the 2014 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts
- Kill The Messenger – The important and tragic story of Gary Webb, the mainstream media, and the CIA
- This is Where I Leave You – the latest in a long line of “family reunion” movies
- A review of summer cinema – it was pretty grim!
- The Trip to Italy – It never should have been made
- A Most Wanted Man – Superficially entertaining, but poorly-made and overrated
- Magic in the Moonlight – It’s pissing me off!
- The Purge: Anarchy – Surprisingly, it’s rather good
- I Origins – ambitious and entertaining
- Boyhood – a bit one dimensional, but its one dimension is lovely, impressive and fun to experience
- Obvious Child – cute, dignified and gutsy
- Snowpiercer – a fantastic, riveting science fiction action allegory
- Edge of Tomorrow – it’s fairly entertaining
- Begin Again – confronting the future of pop music head-on
- The Fault in Our Stars – not super-moving, but definitely enjoyable
- Hellion – a gritty tale of fucked up parents and children
- Night Moves – a cool, subtle portrayal of hippy-liberal activism turned violent
- Cold In July – an outstandingly fun and unusual film, and a paean for the 1980s
- Austenland – so horrible, I’m speechless
- Elena – 80 minutes of torture
- Lucky Them – Toni Collette takes center stage and lights up the screen!
- Belle – it means well, but God is it slow (and dull)
- Finding Vivian Maier – an okay documentary on a fascinating artist
- The German Doctor (Wakolda) – Diverting, but feels more than a little contrived
- Chef – it’s heart is in the right place
- Jodorowsky’s Dune – a bizarre and amazing documentary
- Hateship, Loveship – it goes down well
- Divergent – entertaining, but there’s a lot wrong with it
Tag Archives: Movie Review
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps – a bad 80s movie now has a bad sequel!
My wife and I stood in a line to see this at Union Square on opening night. What can I say about this film? I did not enjoy it, and there is something about its badness that makes it very … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
Tagged Carey Mulligan, Eli Wallach, Frank Langella, Michael Douglas, Movie Review, Oliver Stone, Shia LaBeouf, Wall Street
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Mona Lisa Smile (2003): a reconsideration
My wife and I saw Mona Lisa Smile when it was out in theaters back in 2003 and at the time dismissed it as insipid feel-good fluff. But this past weekend after we got “slimed” by Easy A, we started … Continue reading
Easy A – Generation-Y teenybopper movies, Exhibit A
Many people summarily dismiss teenybopper movies as a genera, but there are great teenybopper movies, okay teenybopper movies, and bad teenybopper movies. Great teenybopper movies recreate the unique horror of the 1980s Generation-X high school experience, in all of it’s … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
Tagged Aly Michalka, Bandslam, Easy A, Emma Stone, Generation-X, Generation-Y, Movie Review, Patricia Clarkson, Penn BadGlay, Stanley Tucci
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Shutter Island (2010) / Angel Heart (1987) – Scorsese lamely copies the work of a forgotten master
Surely some critic somewhere must have noticed that Shutter Island is a rip-off of Angel Heart. The spirit of the story, the structuring of scenes, the visual effects, the use of flashbacks, it all hearkens back to the particular genius … Continue reading
Inglourious Basterds – Is this the worst film ever nominated for an Academy Award?
If Inglourious Basterds had been made in the 1980’s, people would laugh at it now. It would be legendarily bad, held up for ridicule as an example of how incredibly awful films were in the 1980s. The camp, the bad … Continue reading
The Road – A cure for happiness
A. O. Scott did not like The Road. It was “to positive” for him. Apparently he wanted that cute little boy to eat a bullet at the end! He clearly needs some serious help. He probably didn’t like the appearance … Continue reading
Posted in 2009
Tagged A.O. Scott, Cormac McCarthy, Movie Review, Robert Duvall, The Road, Viggo Mortensen
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Up in the Air – entertaining, but ultimately disappointing
Up in the Air deals with a difficult and timely topic – people getting laid off and having their lives destroyed. At the same time it sort-of deals with another timely issue in society: the ridiculous (and pernicious) positive thinking … Continue reading
Invictus – another mediocre Clint Eastwood Movie
Okay, let’s cut right to it, shall we. Despite all the critical acclaim and the awards, Clint Eastwood is really not a very good filmmaker. I’m sorry, he just isn’t. He’s not bad, I suppose, just kind of mediocre. Invictus suffers from the … Continue reading
The Lovely Bones – a weak story, weakly told
The whole point of The Lovely Bones, as I understand it, is to chronicle how the family slowly heals and moves on. Unfortunately, this is the one aspect of the story and the film that are not done very well. It … Continue reading
It’s Complicated – It’s Disappointing
Despite the fun and promising preview for It’s Complicated, it turned out to be a disappointment. It has major script problems and in my opinion almost everyone in the film is miscast. Basically, in the first third, Alec Baldwin holds … Continue reading
Posted in 2009
Tagged Alec Baldwin, Holiday, It's Complicated, Kate Winslet, Meryl Streep, Movie Review, Nancy Meyers, Steve Martin
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