January 24, 2009: Happy-Go-Lucky Happy-Go-Lucky is the latest from British auteur Mike Leigh. He generally brings us poignant character studies, and frequently directs his cast to acting award nominations, if not necessarily wins. Most recently he brought us Vera Drake four years ago, about a middle-aged British housewife performing illegal abortions. A decade earlier, Secrets […]
January 24, 2009: Kung Fu Panda There are typically three animated movies nominated each year for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. If a Pixar movie has come out that year, it is always nominated and usually wins. Dreamworks has been slowly clawing its way towards credibility in the animated market for a decade now, […]
January 21, 2009: The Reader It’s a good thing that I saw Revolutionary Road as the early show on this particular evening, and The Reader as the late show. I thought Revolutionary Road was decent, and better than I expected (in retrospect, I realize I wasn’t expecting much), but The Reader blew it out of […]
January 21, 2009: Revolutionary Road The Half-Assed Movie Reviews reader might have noticed a lack of recent reviews. I only recently realized that this is because I’ve been stuck on the review of Revolutionary Road for weeks now. I keep returning to it, only to bang out a few words, and on one occasion I […]
January 18, 2009: Gran Torino Gran Torino was one of two offerings from Clint Eastwood last fall (the other being Changeling). Both could reasonably be classified as Oscar bait, what with their intimate dramatic storylines hinting at a larger societal discord, lush production values, and occasional chewing of scenery which is carefully calculated to be […]
January 18, 2009: Waltz With Bashir Waltz with Bashir is an animated film presented in Hebrew and other languages, the true story of a young Israeli soldier’s (Ari Folman) experience in the 1982 Lebanon war, a war about which I must admit I know very little. Wartime “footage” from that period is intercut with modern-day […]
January 15, 2009: Standard Operating Procedure Standard Operating Procedure is a documentary about the Abu Ghraib prison abuses by the US Army in Iraq. This story was very big a few years ago, with some embarrassing photos widely circulating on the Internet, and it kicked off the big discussions about whether the US was using […]
January 12, 2009 and March 31, 2009: Quantum of Solace Apparently the reviewer commitment here at Half-Assed Movie Reviews is so half-assed, that a movie I originally saw in the theatre came out on video before I even got around to reviewing it the first time. Not being one to miss an opportunity, I will […]
January 9, 2009: Iron Man I haven’t previously mentioned in my reviews that I’m not such a big fan of comic book movies. This is what I claim, although picking a bit deeper, that claim does fall apart somewhat. I didn’t grow up reading comic books so that means both that I’m not well attuned […]
January 8, 2009: Religulous Bill Maher is a stand-up comedian who has mixed his passion for politics with his gift for sarcastic comedy and made quite the career for himself after what he probably considered a very slow start (he’s come a long way since D.C. Cab back in 1983). His Politically Incorrect panel/talk show […]