[8] Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro give terrific, Oscar-caliber performances in this film about a widowed mother who invites her late husband’s friend, a recovering drug addict, to stay with her. I was moved by the struggle of two deeply wounded people trying to help each other. Berry’s character tries to help Del Toro’s come clean, and he tries to help her bring her family …
[7] Director Morten Tyldum makes this true story of Alan Turing and his team of mathematicians fighting the second world war from their college studies as thrilling and interesting as possible. Benedict Cumberbatch headlines as the socially awkward leader of the group, a closeted homosexual who has a ‘beard’ relationship with a fellow smarty-pants played by Keira Knightley. The drama comes mostly from within the group, …
[7] Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland reteam after their initial pairing in Captain Blood. This time, they’re in a love triangle that plays out during an Indian massacre of British women and children, later spurring into action the contents of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s vengeful Charge. For a film from the ’30s, Charge has balls. You see women and children die on screen during some …
[7] Errol Flynn gives a low-key performance as a dedicated flight surgeon who teams with a bitter pilot (Fred MacMurray) to solve the problem of high altitude sickness and blackouts among Navy dive bombers. Despite the pre-WWII setting, this is more of a straight-forward drama built around the turbulent-turned-respectful relationship between Flynn’s and MacMurray’s characters. The only thing that bugged me about the movie is …
[7] 127 Hours is the true story of a man who accidentally slips into a rocky crevasse in the Arizona desert where he’s trapped for days and must resort to desperate measures in order to survive. After the first fifteen minutes and before the last ten, the film takes place almost entirely within the stone entrapment, where actor James Franco and director Danny Boyle (Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire) keep …
[4] Jake Gyllenhaal plays a pharmaceutical rep and Anne Hathaway plays a free-spirit with the onset of Parkinson’s. They get together and take us with them on a dreary tale that’s more sad than funny, kinda boring, and lacking much forward momentum. What’s most remarkable is the amount of time the romantic leads spend naked (like, REALLY naked).
[6] Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara star in the second adaptation of the Stieg Larsson novel about a journalist and a computer hacker who work to solve the mystery of a missing woman. Is there perhaps something wrong with the fact that The Social Network is more exciting than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? People looking at computer monitors and holding board meetings shouldn’t be …
[7] Elijah Wood and Charlie Hunnam star in this story about a wrongfully-expelled college student who falls into the dangerous British subculture of football ‘hooliganism’. The closest thing we have in America are street gangs, but the British ‘hooligans’ are a little more organized and revolve around football (soccer in America). Wood plays the disenfranchised student while Hunnam plays a higher up in the Green Street Elite …
[5] This early Oscar-winning best picture is uneven at best. Richard Dix makes for a hammy lead, while Irene Dunne is stuck playing his harpy of a wife. The film follows the two as they move west to Oklahoma at the end of the 1800s. The second half of the movie skips through so much time and character development, I felt pretty discombobulated by the …
[8] The teenaged children of a lesbian couple seek out their sperm donor and wackiness ensues. Actually, it’s not all that wacky, and that’s what’s refreshing about The Kids Are All Right. The film steers clear of good/bad absolutes and offers up an ensemble of characters a little more sophisticated than Hollywood rom-coms tend to offer. And while the moms may be gay, I think …
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