A little Vince Vaughan goes a long way, and this film gives us a lot. The female leads – Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder – are quite restrained and wonderful, and the story is, surprise, full of surprises, but the Vaughan-Kevin James bromance is rather more than the other elements can handle. It’s more serious […]
I would coin the term “reality film” for movies like this, except that, fictional as it is, it is so much more real than anything you see on “reality TV.” Peter Stormare’s psychologically chinless small town police chief is as far from a “movie star” as you would want to see on the big screen, […]
Powerful, ambiguous, provocative horror film, set in the world of ballet but mostly in Nina (Natalie Portman)’s mind. I went to see it as a duty, to round out my Oscar list, having overdosed on the trailer, but found the shots that turned me off in previews were compelling in context. The best surprise was […]
With so many movies revolving around meeting cute, courting and ending with, finally, marriage, it was nice to see a story that started five years down the line with the marriage fraying. It then told us the usual story, this time in flashbacks, so we could see how Ryan and Michelle had ended up together, […]
What acting! Colin Firth was superb in last year’s A Single Man, but his portrayal of the stammering King George VI is a tour de force. Geoffrey Rush is no slouch, either, as his commoner tutor. Beyond the acting, though, the film struck me as somewhat trivial. Why? Because I’ve never heard of George VI? […]
For my money, this Oliver Stone rendering did a better job explaining and skewering the recent Wall Street meltdown than Inside Job. Michael Douglas was more interesting, mesmerizing, and significant than any of the bit players interviewed by Charles Ferguson. If love makes the world go around, greed comes a pretty close second.
Great style, but not much substance, this makes one wonder if the Western genre is “all played out.” The one novelty was the flowery and erudite diction, spoken principally by the precocious 14-year-old. Beyond that, every move was one we’d seen before, and Jeff Bridges gave us a little too much Jeff Bridges, coming so […]
Award-worthy performances by, in order, Christian Bale, Melissa Leo and Amy Adams are backed by a supporting cast reminiscent of Mystic River or any of the growing Lehane/Affleck oeuvre. Unfortunately, for a boxing movie, the plot telegraphs its every punch. We know what’s coming; our only interest is in seeing how it gets there. Matt […]
Britain’s National Theatre production starring Rory Kinnear was broadcast in Hahn Hall as part of UCSB’s Arts and Lectures series and disappointed for two reasons. One was that I couldn’t understand half the dialogue and Hamlet’s s’s and f’s sounded like lisps. One is more forgiving of live theater, but when it is a prerecorded presentation […]
How do you make a movie interesting when it is about one man stuck in a pit for, apparently, 127 hours, especially when we know when and how he gets out? I am still wondering, after watching this film by Danny Boyle, director of Slumdog Millionaire. I admit to not watching it all, as the […]
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