A hauntingly beautiful story of French monks in remote Algeria during a time of civil war, but what impressed me most was the respect it gave and intelligence it ascribed to its viewers. Quotidian events were presented on a par with liturgical, and when crisis came, it was realistic, not overwrought. Whether the monks were […]
The ridiculous – no, silly – plot concept, that an “adustment bureau” monitors and controls human fates – by opening doors to a different dimension but having to run on foot to catch a bus – is not saved by a central romance between the normally likeable but here personality-free Matt Damon, who seems to […]
“Unpleasant,” “absurd,” “pointless” are the descriptors that come to mind when reacting to this purported comedy, with “insufferable” not far behind. A little Paul Giamatti can be interesting, although I’m tiring of even that, but a whole movie of him smoking cigars, drinking and behaving badly is hard to take. Then there is the question, […]
Sometimes, it seems, not much happens in a year: we grow tomatoes, have a barbecue party, lose a friend from work – oh, and our son gets engaged. Not much there for a movie, it would seem, but Mike Leigh’s ensemble actors make the mundane sufficiently dramatic without, for the most part, histrionics. The exception […]
Most of the movie was Javier Bardem’s face, which expressed a range of emotions, almost all melancholy. The backdrop was the Europe of 2009’s Gomorrah, this time in Spain instead of Italy, with sweatshops of Chinese illegals, Senegali street merchants, and cops on the take or on the make. A fair amount of explanation was […]
Depth aside, everything you could want in a night at the movies: humor, romance, cleverness, cute kids, gorgeous women, Jennifer Aniston. This was only my second Adam Sandler movie, but both featured a gentle kindspiritedness, if such a word exists, that let me relax and enjoy the gags, many of which were quite original. Most […]
Having already given my pronouncements on the Best Picture race – for me, it should be Winter’s Bone over Black Swan, by a neck – it is time to look at the individual awards. The pundits are almost unanimous in predicting the actual winners, so I will instead give an analysis of whom I would […]
1. Winter’s Bone. The most authentic, least Hollywood of the bunch, with acting that didn’t seem like acting (compare Jennifer Lawrence to Hailee Steinfeld) and a gripping, unpredictable story.
Two second-rate TV ‘specials’ covering the upper and lower halves of the river, but nothing distinguished one part of the river from another, or this river from any other. Shots of animals often had no connection to the river, in any case, and were nothing we didn’t see in better films 20 years ago. A […]
This was such an annoying film I’d give it a negative score if I could. Different rock eras were conflated and confused, and no legitimate story line emerged. The filmmaker took his access to the James Taylor/Carole King Reunion Tour and purported to base the story of the Troubadour nightclub in L.A. on it, but […]
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