This low-key feature, set in Hawaii, is a fairly rich character study. George Clooney stars as a businessman whose wife has had a boating accident and lies in a coma. His young daughters are too much for him to handle […]
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Without Love (1945) ✰ ✰ ✰
This is the third film that Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn made together and appears to be one of the less remembered. A romantic comedy by the same playwright who created The Philadelphia Story, Without Love documents a marriage based on […]
Continue reading »Requiem for a Dream (2000) ✰ ✰
Requiem for a Dream is the film that truly made director Darren Aronofsky’s reputation and was a well-regarded art film when it was released. A young heroin addict (Jared Leto), his best friend (Marlon Wayans), and his girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly) […]
Continue reading »Europa (1991) ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰
Europa is the conclusion of Lars Von Trier’s Europe trilogy and announced his emergence as a major filmmaker. The movie begins with Max Von Sydow hypnotizing the audience with a soothing, authoritarian voice over, the first of many signs that […]
Continue reading »Tower Heist (2011) ✰ ✰ ½
Caper movies have been popular for better than half a century now, and show no sign of slowing down. Sooner or later virtually everyone in Hollywood makes one. Caper movies are (supposed to be) fun, clever spits-in-the-eye to authority groups […]
Continue reading »One for the Money
I usually try to avoid high anticipation for upcoming movies because they so often do not or cannot fulfill the hopefulness their publicity generates. In fact, I am happiest when I know the bare minimum about a movie; that way […]
Continue reading »J. Edgar (2011) ✰ ✰
Few Americans have led lives as influential or controversial as the longtime director of the F.B.I, J. Edgar Hoover. Why is it then that no one can seem to make a decent movie about the man? Clint Eastwood is the […]
Continue reading »Puss in Boots (2011) ✰ ✰ ✰
I enjoyed but never loved the Shrek films, and my favorite characters were the supporting ones used for comic relief: Donkey, and Puss in Boots. I think it’s great that Puss gets his own movie. The more cat movies the better, […]
Continue reading »The Tree of Life (2011) ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰
Terrence Malick’s hugely ambitious fifth film is also, amazingly, his best. It focuses on a family in 1950s Texas and holds them as an embodiment of grace. Their oldest son, Jack (played by an adult by Sean Penn), has to […]
Continue reading »The Runaways (2010) ✰ ✰
Floria Sigismondi’s retelling of the tale of the all-female, all-adolescent rock band The Runaways covers their origin to the time that lead singer Cherie Curie (Dakota Fanning) quits due to…insubordination? The uncertainty in that summary captures the lack of coherence […]
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