Unfortunate title, since the characters are so reminiscent of the superior Little Miss Sunshine. Still, there was a good indie-feel, despite big-name actors, and the whole ride was more fun than I usually have with a bunch of losers, however lovable.
Watchability 5. Likeability 4. Credibility 0. Even as a total fantasy, this star vehicle for Julia Roberts and Clive Owen left much to be desired. As a guessing game – when were there reactions real, when were they acting? – it wasn’t worth the effort. If you’re going to make a spy movie, bring back […]
How you feel about Revolutionary Road, either the book or the faithful movie adaptation, depends on how you react to Frank and April Wheeler, for this is really a character study. They are certainly not likeable characters, but that wouldn’t matter if they were comprehensible. And they should be equal. Unfortunately, Kate Winslet is an […]
Without question, the worst-acted movie of the year, and the plot warn’t much better. Other than Eastwood, the actors seemed to be reading their lines, after checking the teleprompter. Eastwood’s softening to the Hmong family next door belied his characterization, and Sue’s bold approach to him made little sense, either. On top of The Changeling, I […]
The first hour was relentlessly depressing: Tiivii is told he has TB, is sent from his Arctic home to a big-city sanatorium, where no one speaks his language – and he makes no effort to learn French. Things perk up a bit when they locate an Inuit boy with TB who can translate, but the […]
Billed as Festival Director Roger Durling’s favorite, this Czech movie was beautifully and sensitively acted, but the simple story of a gay teacher’s coming to grips with his sexual preference undoubtedly appealed to the Durls more than me. (Why he didn’t rave about the somewhat similar Yngve surprised me.) Other than reflecting on how different […]
The unfortunate title aside – there was no “man” in the movie and it was about so much more than loving Yngve – there was nothing I would change in this Norwegian coming-of-age story, a study, much like Juno, of that age when teenage rebellion and angst run up against real-world consequences. There was the […]
Amazing film of a leopard in the wild does not, of itself, make a great movie. In fact, this was a pretty bad movie: anthropomorphism abounded and Jeremy Irons’s melodramatic narration didn’t help. But worst was the convoluted story – not very interesting to begin with, then told in flashbacks so long one forgot the […]
I was less than enthralled throughout, partially because I was never comfortable with the premise: a troubled mother abandons her infant in the backseat of a taxi and the genial driver spends two days trying to return or find a home for the baby. Not that this couldn’t happen – although finding such a saintly […]
At first I dismissed this as a Sicilian version of the Sopranos without plot, humor, recognizable characters or professional camerawork. By the end, though, I knew the people and their stories had coalesced into a bleak, violent and scary world of an Italian crime “family” that read more like a nature documentary in its realism […]
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