April 19, 2010: Greenberg Based on the trailers, Greenberg looked like it could provide a unique perspective on people and relationships despite this being very well-trodden ground, or it could have been a complete disaster. The quality of the story, the dialogue, and the acting would be paramount. I believe it succeeded. Ben Stiller plays […]
April 18, 2010: The Ghost Writer As I delve back into conventional new-release movies following my annual Oscar binge, I am presented with another new entry by a legend in his own time. I won’t go into the details of Roman Polanski’s personal troubles, but it’s hard for anyone to deny the brilliance of his […]
April 12, 2010: Shutter Island This whole process of reviewing all the movies I watch must be seriously screwing up my viewing habits. How is it possible that in over a year and a half of writing, I haven’t seen a single Martin Scorsese film? I guess it must be true. And in order to […]
April 11, 2010: Date Night Tina Fey and Steve Carell are two of NBC’s hottest sitcom stars right now, so it’s only natural that they would eventually turn up together in a movie. Date Night was a perfect example of a film which looked good in the trailers, but had great potential for disappointment. Even […]
April 3, 2010: Fight Club I’ve mentioned before that 1999 was a great movie year for me. American Beauty, The Matrix, Being John Malkovich, Office Space, The Sixth Sense, Ronin, and the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair all remain particular favourites of mine. We’ll ignore Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace for the […]
March 31, 2010: Thank You for Smoking This is going to be a fairly short review, but that’s no reflection on the film and I can without hesitation recommend it. Thank You for Smoking (2005) was Jason Reitman’s feature directorial debut. You may have heard more about his later efforts, Juno (2007) and Up in […]
March 30, 2010: The Runaways Except for a very brief time around 1983-1984, I’ve always been at least a decade behind on music. I spent most of the 1980s exposed to music from the 1960s. I spent the 1990s learning about music from the 1980s. I spent the early part of this past decade discovering […]
March 30, 2010: Hot Tub Time Machine Ooh, I’ve been looking forward to writing about this one! I see a lot of silly comedies in the theatre, which means that I see a lot of trailers for new silly comedies, since the studios and distributors try to match up the trailers with the tone of […]
March 14, 2010: One Week I felt a bit guilty not seeing One Week in the theatre. I knew roughly what it was about, and the reviews were decent and it starred Joshua Jackson who is a fairly popular star (even in the US – largely due to his role in Dawson’s Creek a decade […]
March 7, 2010: Ajami It’s been a long slog through the Oscar-nominated films this year, admittedly with plenty of bright spots although it felt like a weaker than usual year overall, despite the strong core contenders. My final tick of the checkbox this year, brought in right under the wire within a few hours of […]