[6] Embeth Davidtz (Army of Darkness) and Alessandro Nivola (The Art of Self-Defense) play married Chicago art dealers who stay with Nivola’s North Carolina family while Davidtz negotiates to represent a controversial painter who lives nearby. Nivola’s parents and brother put up a wall of quiet disapproval to Davidtz, but it slowly comes down as they realize she’s not the ‘elitist’ they fear. In contrast, …
[4] Lou Taylor Pucci stars in writer/director Mike Mills’ adaptation of Walter Kirn’s novel about a nervous high school student afflicted with thumbsucking. Once he’s prescribed ritalin, Pucci’s character starts to feel more confident. Unfortunately, the drug also turns him into an asshole. If Thumbsucker focused more on the angle of drug abuse, it might better distinguish itself from the myriad of other quirky indie …
[6] Cillian Murphy stars a young trans-woman who leaves Ireland in the 1970s to find her birth mother in London. Along the way, she has flings with a singer (Gavin Friday) and a comic magician (Stephen Rea), rough encounters with the IRA and London police, and an unexpected reconciliation with her birth father. Breakfast on Pluto reunites director Neil Jordan with material involving sexuality and …
[8] Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott) leads an all-star ensemble in this surreal, satiric look at the breakdown of suburban existence. The Chumscrubber is an ambitious conceptual piece, not unlike American Beauty in tone and style. But where American Beauty centered on one character’s shaky morality and lost me, The Chumscrubber stems more confidently from one of my favorite thematic tropes — human beings’ desperate need …
[6] Director Lasse Hallström (The Shipping News, Chocolat) serves up a fluffy, romantic, period piece comedy centered around the antics of legendary lover Casanova in Venice. Heath Ledger plays the promiscuous hero, who early in the film receives a mandate from the ruler of Venice to get married or leave Venice forever. So Casanova goes in search of a wife, beginning a second act rife with mistaken …
[6] Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda square off in this by-the-numbers rom-com. Lopez is in love with Michael Vartan’s character, and Fonda’s character naturally doesn’t think Lopez is good enough for her baby boy. If you’ve ever seen any movie ever before, you can imagine the rest. Monster-in-Law doesn’t have to guts to get dark — that would have made it more interesting. But both …
[7] Christopher Nolan successfully reboots the Batman franchise by taking a cue from Bryan Singer (X-Men), who showed the world how much better a comic book movie could be by taking its subject matter seriously. While the approach works for this Batman film, I must admit that I personally prefer my Batman movies to be hyper-stylized and gothic as all get out, which Tim Burton …
[8] After finishing The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson tackled a remake of his favorite film, King Kong. Jackson’s remake is largely faithful to the 1933 original, while generously expanding the storyline and embellishing some of the characters. Jackson protracts the opening act more than necessary, but his interpretation of Skull Island is amazing. It’s this middle portion of the movie that delivers the …
[7] Robert Rodriquez and Frank Miller join forces, with a little help from guest director Quentin Tarantino, to bring Miller’s much-loved Sin City to the screen. The result is less a film adaptation than a graphic novel come to life. The color palette is restrained, usually resorting to faithful recreations of Miller’s black and white panel work. The hyper-stylized approach works well for a movie …
[5] While I’d rather Terrence Malick make a live-action Pocahontas movie than Disney, the results are still far from amazing… and a wee bit boring. Malick focuses on a love triangle between our girl Poca (Q’orianka Kilcher), John Smith (Colin Farrell), and John Rolfe (Christian Bale). The first half of the movie is like Malick’s Days of Heaven, with Kilcher and Farrell running around in …
Copyright © 2024 | Theme by MH Themes