Rather remarkable how the filmmakers mixed cartoon and human worlds, making both equally realistic, albeit totally absurd. Also remarkable how they brought both sets of characters to an emotional climax, capped and released by the Clash singing “I Fought the Law.” Will Forte and John Cena were pleasures to watch and Wiley Coyote was somehow […]
If you just don’t get something, an endless series of talking heads saying how great it is won’t make it happen. A rapid-fire montage of unrelated birds and bees as a visual background was more distracting than useful–how do you “film” poetry? At least now I know who Mary Oliver was, although I’m no more […]
A sweet short story about a long-forgotten poet working for the Post Office who gets noticed and has a brief moment with a younger generation. The story plays out on Willem DaFoe’s expressively grizzled face and for me was a welcome return to normality from Spiderman. Also welcome was the simpler world these denizens of Greenwich […]
In an effort to monitor the zeitgeist, I double-featured two of the year’s hottest-at-the-box-office movies yesterday. Spider-Man: Brand New Day bored me out of the theater one hour into its Odyssey-like length. I couldn’t understand the mumbo-jumbo, the all-too-similar action scenes kept arriving like clockwork, and the love interest lacked mystery. In all, it was cartoon-like. We’ve […]
Reminiscent of The Odyssey in its length, focus on one man, beautiful cinematography, muddled philosophy and lack of narrative drive, this film does nothing than another Kurosawa didn’t do ten times better sixty years ago. Students of 16th-century Japanese history might appreciate the obscure references, but again like The Odyssey, it was Greek to me. […]
Forgetting for a moment how Christopher Nolan’s movie compares to Homer’s poem, let me react to the film itself. First, it is encompassing–visually, aurally, dramatically. Despite its 280-minute length (with no introductory throat-clearing), I never considered looking at my watch. That said, it could have been shortened 20-30 minutes without losing much. The scenes with […]
I don’t know about the beautiful part, but Lebanon under siege was definitely a sad backdrop for a charming romance between unfortunately mismatched lovers. The secondary characters were amusingly overdrawn, which set off the achingly real relationship between the beautiful and accomplished Yasmina and the effervescent but slightly goofy Nino. At the end, though, I […]
A fun premise with a slew of cute one-liners, but the joke (one only) grew thin as the movie progressed to a toothless ending. Neither Olivia Wilde nor Cooper Hoffman merited 90 minutes of attention.
More episodic than dramatic, as befits a memoir. The scenes of oppression in Iran are harrowing and a reminder that strengthening the theocratic government there is not the least of the disastrous consequences of Trump’s misbegotten war. The movie’s star is pretty, but before the end of the overlong film I tired of seeing her […]
A masterclass in acting: Penelope Cruz is sensational, but Olivia Wilde, Edward Norton and Seth Rogen make the case that the Academy should add an award for “Ensemble Performance.” The casting is also award-worthy, assuming you can accept the notion that Seth Rogen, like Woody Allen, is attractive to women. That the movie was shot […]
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