Archive for category: Reviews

Nigel Gilchrist, noted travel writer in dialogue at the SB Museum on Thursday, pointed out how important travel was to the understanding of art: one should experience of the theatricality of everyday life in Rome to appreciate the works of Caravaggio, Bernini, et al. The same can be said for the cinema, and our recent visits to Brazil and Argentina supplied the context for our enjoyment of this family dramedy from Argentina in which an uptight father can’t cope with the open sexuality of their beach vacation to Aguas Verdes. More than the story, this film was fun for the characters – the fat, bratty son, the sexually emerging daughter, the mysteriously romantic Lothario who broke the camel’s back and ended up in the drink.

More a promotion piece for the Islamic Museum of Qatar, this “documentary” had no modulation, no drama, no perspective and raised more questions than it answered about this project. For starters, how was I.M. Pei selected? Were there any concerns about entrusting this to an architect who would be 91 years old before it was finished? There were so many overheated shots of the same building that by the end I thought it blocky and boring. Worst was the voiceover narration, pitched at the sixth-grade level – maybe because the film is to be used by the Qatari government, presumably for non-native English speakers. [SBIFF]

Two hours of watching a very annoying Korean mother trying to protect her mildly retarded son from a murder charge. There was nothing unduly offensive about the story; I just got tired, very early on, of seeing her continually pained, frantic expression on the screen. [SBIFF]

Good music brings so much to a movie, and the original songs by T Bone Burnett and Scott Bruton carried this sucker, along with a bravura, Oscar-worthy performance by…Maggie Gyllenhaal. Jeff Bridges, who is getting so much acclaim, is fine, but I didn’t see a lot of challenge in the role. Without the music, it’s hard to see what-all I would’ve gotten excited about.

Perfectly charming divertissement set in Santa Barbara, with Meryl Streep acting up a storm opposite two cardboard comedians, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. Not that they aren’t funny, it’s just hard to take Jane’s dilemma or predicament or situation as seriously as Meryl does, with those two not-so-real gentlemen as her choices. The best comic role, in a recognizably human form, too, belonged to John Krasinski as son-in-law-to-be Harley. Streep’s home-in-the-Valley and Martha Stewart lifestyle provided plenty of eye candy, and most of the gags, while not deep, tickled the audience of seniors, including us.