Category Archives: Reviews

ARCHIVE REVIEW: The New World

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The New World
Directed by: Terrence Malick
Written by: Terrence Malick
Starring: Colin Farrell, Q’orianka Kilcher, Christian Bale, Christopher Plummer

Fairy tales are the ultimate sense of wonder and escapism for our society. With an entire culture fixated on Disney classics, princesses who fall in love with soldiers, forbidden love and foreign romances which are really more Americanized than we think, it is difficult to place realism and authenticity into the mix.

Stories of enchantment often require singing, colors, happy endings and no subtitles to satisfy our desires for fantasy. It is pathetic in a way. Our culture could not be content with a fairy tale didn’t have these elements; otherwise we strip it from the fairy tale genre. Sure the words fairy tale mean magic, fabled or legendary, but must swooning love stories be doused in Hollywood conventions, Americanization, modernization or artistic eye-candy to make it romantic?

In Terrence Malick’s retelling of the classic Pocahontas story, he explores just that concept. Putting realism and authenticity into a classic fairy tale, he experiments with cinematic devices to convey something more raw, something more tangible and something more real. Continue reading →

REVIEW: Salt

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Salt
Directed by: Phillip Noyce
Written by: Kurt Wimmer
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofer, and Daniel Olbrychski

In the age of the 3D cash-in, Hollywood has been lax on its movie stars.  Unless you call Sam Worthington, “star” of Avatar and Clash of the Titans, one, you don’t actually find many legitimate celebrities inhabiting these movies for more than a cameo.  You can say what you want about explosions and gun shots flying at you in 3D, but if you don’t have star power behind it, your movie will just be replaced by the next quick sell.

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ARCHIVE REVIEW: Amélie

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Amélie
Directed by: Jean Pierre-Jeunet
Written by: Guillaume Laurant & Jean Pierre-Jeunet
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Serge Merlin, and Clotilde Mollet

Deep despair, insightful narcissism, impossibly cultured people- these are all things associated with French cinema.  Though our overseas friends gave us the new wave, these things rode the surf as well.  American cinema has tried since the birth of the French new wave to implement it as carelessly as such French staples as Breathless and The 400 Blows.  What a strange, wonderful phenomenon it is that French filmmaker Jean Pierre-Jeunet turns French cinema on its head yet again with Amélie.

Amélie is as free-spirited, uplifting, and gracious as the protagonist its title speaks of (Audrey Tautou).  Rarely does a movie tackle optimism as straightforwardly as this, and it’s something new for the often dark and brooding films associated with French cinema.  During its more than two hour run time, Pierre-Jeunet’s film manages to make a mundane, normal life seem enthralling thanks to a hilarious, charming and original screenplay and some of the best visuals the cinema has ever seen.

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ARCHIVE REVIEW: Julia

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Julia
Directed by: Erick Zonca
Written by: Roger Bohbot & Michael Collins
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Aidan Gould, Saul Rubinek, and Kate de Castillo

Make no ifs, ands, or buts about it: Tilda Swinton is one of the finest actresses of her generation.  So sublime and brilliant is her technique, that even in a dud like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe she manages to give you something to watch.  And then there is Julia, a movie that is actually good, where she inhabits the heart and soul of her character, leaving you stunned, disgusted, and many other things by the time the credits roll.

As the title character, Swinton plays an alcoholic nothing hired by a neurotic Mexican neighbor (Kate de Castillo) to kidnap her son and reunite them across the border.  This plot seems like something you’d see in a glitzy Hollywood caper, and the characters in Roger Bohbot and Michael Collins’ screenplay seem conscious of it.  When Julia tries to explain the scheme to some of her confidants, they look at her like she’s a fool, which she is.

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REVIEW: Inception

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Inception
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Written by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Marion Cotillard

Waves crashing to shore, then a body; these are both one of the first things we see in Inception, and one of the last.  Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated dream-thriller may wow you with its visual prowess, dazzle you with its high-ended concepts, and intrigue you with its heist-style head invading, but it has a typical Hollywood-style circular structure.

If it sounds like I’m already being hard on Nolan and his predetermined masterpiece, it’s only because you need to know right off the bat that it does not reinvent cinema the way it’s publicity campaign suggested.

Many reviews have pointed out all of Nolan’s influences (2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix) and for good reason: Inception is chock full of moments where anyone who’s seen a sci-fi movie will chuckle to themselves.

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REVIEW: Despicable Me

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Despicable Me
Directed by: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud
Written by: Ken Daurio, Sergio Pablos, Cinco Paul
Starring: Steve Carrel, Russel Brand, Jason Segel, Will Arnett, Kristen Wigg

Maybe our generation is spoiled. Given Pixar just eleven-peated at the box office and in reviews with the latest Toy Story installment, it seems like audiences can’t stomach any other brand of animation. It’s nearly impossible to read a review of an animated movie (Pixar or not) that doesn’t bring up the success the company has with blending sentiment, humor and cinematic beauty into its layers of computer generated imagination. So when any other work outside of Pixar comes out with one-note characters, cheesy karaoke or dance scenes, celebrity voice actors and the promise of a heightened 3D experience, it’s hard not to find it… despicable.

With Despicable Me, it seems no different. There’s the corny villain, the cute non-talking sidekick character(s) and the ‘everybody dances’ scene in the end because filmmakers couldn’t think any other clever, satisfying or touching way to end the story they just told for two hours. But luckily it is mildly saved in mild sentiment, mild story and mild humor of Steve Carrel. Continue reading →

REVIEW: Predators

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Predators
Directed by: Nimród Antal
Written by: Alex Litvak & Michael Finch (screenplay)
Starring: Adrian Brody, Alice Braga, Topher Grace, and Laurence Fishburne

If someone had told me at the beginning of the year that Adrian Brody would be the sci-fi star of 2010, I would’ve either chuckled or responded with “Yeah, so?”  With his performance in Splice as a genetic engineer he gave us an emotional core, and with Predators he returns to the King Kong action hero he surprised us with in 2005.

Predators is another franchise reboot, and it’s not too bad.  For the action-junkies out there looking to avoid Despicable Me or any of the other 3D cash-ins of the week, here is a semi-intelligent, well-made thriller.  It borrows from The Most Dangerous Game, which in its original form is a demented guy who brings people to his island so he can hunt them.  Here, it’s high-tech aliens.

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ARCHIVE REVIEW: Elephant

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Elephant
Directed by: Gus Van Sant
Written by: Gus Van Sant
Starring: Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, and Kristen Hicks

Had the tracking shot never been invented, Gus Van Sant’s searing humanization of the Columbine shootings wouldn’t have made it.  As we literally wonder the halls of a fictional suburban high school,  the camera follows several students in a semi-warped time frame.  We often see the same event from different perspectives, much like the end of Tarantino’s Jackie Brown.  The time before and after these intersections shows us the same setting in very different lights.

Van Sant is one of the leading auteurs of the gay film movement, and though not all of his films have those themes, his best films often do.  Elephant contains a controversial shower kiss between the two shooters, Eric (Eric Deulen) and Alex (Alex Frost), before they embark on their killing spree.  It’s not a romantic moment, or even a passionate one, it’s just there.

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REVIEW: Knight and Day

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Knight and Day
Directed by: James Mangold
Written by: Patrick O’Neil
Starring: Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, and Viola Davis

When Knight and Day began, the most interesting thing I could think about with it was what the title could possibly mean.  Sure, it’s typical Hollywood word play, but it was intriguing nonetheless.  Tom Cruise could be the Knight in shining armor to Cameron Diaz’s sunny smile.  Once it’s revealed what the title is actually referring to (some solar battery hidden in a knight figurine), there’s no mystery left.

Marketed as a summer movie for adults, Knight and Day is filled to the brim with plot cliches and one-dimensional characters almost any child would recognize.  If this is the kind of stuff targeted at a mature audience, I’ll stick with movies for kids.

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ARCHIVE REVIEW: Superbad

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Superbad
Directed by: Greg Mottola
Written by: Evan Goldberg
Starring: Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Emma Stone, Seth Rogen

For the sake of our generation and the half-baked high school sex comedies that work (or won’t) to define it, there is an artist who is making sure that our comedies won’t be remembered by sex with pie, hangovers, ogres or those Sex and the City girls.

In Superbad he is only credited as a producer, but the film is loaded with a posse of writing partners, actors and talent who’ve all hitched their wagons to his success. It also resonates the style of the writer/director/producer in terms of narrative aesthetics, vulgar content, sentiment, male ego and penis jokes which he has vowed in every one his projects.

Judd Apatow, soon after finding endless success as a producer for Will Ferrell filth and once-roommate Adam Sandler, began rewriting Hollywood’s biggest scripts and becoming a critically adored creator of The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, started a brand for himself in comedy which now rivals John Hughes or Ben Stiller. Up until Superbad it’s all been for grown-ups (thankfully not with that latest Sandler hit, Grown Ups).

With Superbad, the Apatow market finally starting serving minors. Continue reading →