This was a minimalist movie, like, say, a Donald Judd sculpture: stark, clean lines, eerily beautiful, solid and ambiguous in meaning. The opening shot established the director’s style – monochromatic (usually blue), intense, with long, slow takes. The epitome was Carey Mulligan singing “New York, New York.” Not only did she sing at half-speed, but […]
Charlize Theron was sensational as a case of arrested development, the fast blonde whose life peaked senior year in high school. She was also, I’m advised, a convincing alcoholic. Beyond that, there was not much of a story and only one other interesting character, Matt, the schlubby guy who viewed high school from the opposite […]
Most interesting as a history lesson in the lives and characters of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, so I hope the screenwriters did their research. Top billing, however, went to Keira Knightley, who certainly did a lot of acting, although I could have done with less jaw-jutting as a sign of repressed tension. Fassbender, Mortenson […]
A totally sweet story, conceived in innocence and told as such. There were no villains (just some buffoons), no tension or melodrama; every character was worth the time and every scene was fun to watch. Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench, as Laurence Olivier and Sybil Thorndike, reminded us what great actors the British are, and […]
A sumptuously beautiful film, but a beauty that had nothing to do with nature and everything to do with the hermetic world of the cinema. I suspect a true cinephile would have recognized an allusion in every character, every shot of Martin Scorsese’s homage to George Melies, silent film, and the French cinema. For the […]
This George Clooney vehicle started slowly then gradually built to a moderate walk – an apt metaphor since the film had two scenes of Clooney running, something his agent should guard against. There were travelogue scenes of Hawaii and an unconvincing subplot about the disposal of a Hawaiian estate, but the film’s thrust was the […]
I barely noticed Jennifer Chastain in Tree of Life and scarcely recognized her in The Help, but by the time I caught on to her in Take Shelter I was blown away by her acting skills, by the empathy she communicated. Michael Shannon’s may be the more bravura performance – I have no idea how […]
This is, I suspect, as good a movie as we will get about the financial meltdown of 2008. While not an accurate picture of any one company or situation, there seem to be real-life precedents for almost everything in the film, starting with the basic dilemma: do I have any moral obligation not to sell […]
A most pleasant walk, with beautiful scenery and some interesting characters, especially (for me) Joni Mitchell-lookalike Deborah Kara Unger. Martin Sheen is always good company, too, and the searching for his son in a movie directed by his real-life son Emilio Estevez added poignancy. While there were a number of unlikely melodramatic incidents to keep […]
As a birder, I felt compelled to watch this film, to see what the rest of the world was learning about birding (although only two other people were in the theater with me). The good news is that “competitive birding” takes a big hit: it comes across as obsessive, unseemly and not a whole lot […]
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