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Page One – 6
Even Impressionist paintings have a subject, but this collection of vignettes about the New York Times went all over the place. Was this film about how the Times now covers the media? about the Times’s uneasy relationship with new media? about the troubling economics of print journalism? how a story – e.g., the rise of […]
The Trip – 7
One’s appreciation of this film surely depends on one’s interest in, or tolerance for, Steve Coogan. To his credit, he has taken the role of the successful loser, less funny than his sidekick Rob Brydon and more at sea in his personal life. Because of his conceit, however, we don’t enjoy the time spent alone […]
Buck – 5
When a documentary maker sets out to chronicle someone’s life, he or she never knows if something dramatic will occur that will make the finished documentary exciting, emotional, or at least interesting. In this case, the story of horse trainer Buck Branaman, nothing happened and the result is, frankly, boring. If watching horses in a […]
Tree of Life – 5
There was no shortage of ambition, or pretension, in Terrence Malick’s fifth opus, which complements, for some reason, the evolution of the universe with the arc of one average man’s (Malick’s?) life in Waco, Texas. Young Jack has steely eyes, and his bildungsroman might have made a good story, although how he morphs into the […]
13 Assassins – 7
A quintessential samurai movie (I forget the Japanese word for this genre), replete with the gathering of ronin, the revenge motive, the uncouth jester, and the bloody battle at the end. There is a hint, maybe more, of a larger message: what a waste this is, wouldn’t it be better if we devoted our energies […]