February 10, 2010: Crazy Heart Jeff Bridges is the main attraction in Crazy Heart, and he sells it beautifully. Hollywood loves it when an aging actor or actress finds a film that allows them to channel their long experience into a tour de force performance, often leading to the recognition which has eluded them for […]
February 9, 2010: El Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes) Argentina’s entry for consideration in 2009 and nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, The Secret in Their Eyes is a complicated story anchored by a police detective’s obsessive quest to solve a rape/murder case. Flashbacks to the original investigation […]
February 5, 2010: The Princess and the Frog For a basic story idea that seems like it’s been done to death, The Princess and the Frog actually makes a decent little case for itself during its scant running time, set in an oft-neglected time and place in American history. In early 20th century New Orleans, […]
February 4, 2010: The Blind Side I’ve generally been happy over the past decade or so, as the modern generation of actresses came into their own and started winning Oscars. Helen Hunt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, Hilary Swank and Charlize Theron all deservedly took home Oscar gold. The one that stuck […]
February 3, 2010: Sherlock Holmes A movie about Sherlock Holmes? Directed by Guy Ritchie? Starring Robert Downey, Jr? If this sounds strange, imagine how it must have sounded to the guys who were asked to sign over $100 million to make it happen. Well, I guess Sherlock Holmes provides a solid story base. And Guy […]
February 1, 2010: Avatar At this point, Avatar has topped the world box office and effectively re-crowned James Cameron as the king of Hollywood. Lots has been written about it, and opinions differ. I had been wondering whether I would come up with an exhaustive analysis or more or less gloss over the film as […]
January 31, 2010: The Road Viggo Mortensen does grizzled really well. The ladies think he’s pretty, but throw a ragged beard and some filth on him, and you’d never know that he’s one of the beautiful people. The Road is a post-apocalyptic story of a man struggling for survival with his son after the disappearance […]
January 27, 2010: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans This is one of those movies where you just have to say “wow”. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans is not some great masterpiece, and it might wear thin after a bunch of viewings, but it’s a hell of a […]
January 21, 2010: Collapse Collapse is a documentary, and a very sparse one at that. A single interviewee sits in a half-darkened room and talks for an hour and a half, with photos and news clippings supporting his stories and his claims. The discussion is about the inevitable collapse of society as we know it, […]
January 19, 2010: Brothers I’ve seen a lot of movies in this run-up to Oscar season, and while Brothers played reasonably well for me at the time, in the weeks since I saw the film it has mostly faded from my memory. The consensus seems to be that we’re looking at yet another needless American […]