Wonderful performances by Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, embodying, respectively, physical deterioration and maturation. Inasmuch as we sort of knew Stephen Hawking’s story it was, in a way, more interesting to follow the path of Jane Wilde, who started cute as a button then had to deal with a crippled husband, three children and her […]
Considering this film took place at night, in stressful situations, featuring many working stiffs, in a very noir setting, it was remarkable that no one smoked. Maybe, then, it was no coincidence that at the very end of the credits, where they usually disclaim hurting any animals during filming, there was a line that no […]
Let’s hope Jon Stewart keeps his day job. I was never engaged and could have walked out at any point; I did so after about 70 minutes. Gael Garcia Bernal was an odd choice to play the lead; it felt like he was a tourist, floating through. When I think of how gripping Argo was […]
Very minor Woody Allen, to say the least. Absurd ending united Colin Firth and Emma Stone characters, although there was no reason to think they were meant for each other, or would last more than a few weeks in marriage. Colin Firth was either miscast or misdirected; in any case he was unconvincing and not […]
Wonderful acting by Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig conveys the closeness of twins. Everyday nature of the story was refreshing, but it also meant plot ran out of steam well before the ending. Still, a fine effort.
The movie delivered on the book’s strengths – original plot, interesting characters – as well as its weakness – a frustratingly unsatisfying ending. It’s hard to know how someone who hadn’t read the book would have been affected by the plot twists and turns; for us, we watched and mentally checked off how Ben Affleck, […]
A thoroughly unpleasant movie experience. After our friend Jeremy Shamos gets knocked out, we are left with five highly neurotic characters who have zero appeal among them. Director Inarritu heightens the unpleasantness with a distracting continuous-tracking camera shot. What’s funny is how reviewers complained that the theater-critic character was unrealistic, when the entire movie was […]
Atmosphere, characters and great acting – what more could you want? A plot that makes sense? Nah, just keep us guessing and move it along, a la Lehane’s earlier Shutter Island. (I mean, why would a punk keep wearing a broken watch?) Tom Hardy’s near-autistic bartender was astonishing: you could read the blankness behind his […]
What was fascinating was trying to figure out how the filmmakers got their footage of Adam Winfield with his psychiatrist, his defense lawyer, his parents. Perhaps someone decided when he got arrested that his best hope of justice was to film everything. Getting such cooperation from codefendant Morlock, after he was sentenced to 24 years […]
Tedious in the extreme, even when seen on a transocean airflight. The opening montage of actual Vermeer paintings made everything that followed pale in comparison. An analogy might be watching someone without much personality dissecting a Penn & Teller magic trick for 90 minutes, as opposed to watching the trick itself.
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