“At some point you have to choose between life and fiction. The two are very close, but they never actually touch.” These words of Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal apply as much to their directorial debut, The Words, as they do to the story within it. A touching drama about the world of writing, this…
I suppose every new animated feature has to have a comic relief side-kick that follows in the footsteps of Scrat of “Ice Age” fame. In Walt Disney Studio’s Frozen that sidekick appears to be a snowman named Olaf. His purpose is unclear (other than to make the kids laugh) but from the synopsis of the…
Oscar-winning director Susanne Bier has crafted several emotionally resonant films that have had a strong impact on the viewer. Unfortunately, Love Is All You Need is not one of them. Hitting all the right buttons, the film makes a concerted effort to appeal to the requisite demographics but forgets to aim at constituents with intelligence…
I’ve been told (and tend to agree) the internet is really good for just one thing: Instantaneous access to pornography. In Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut, Don Jon, the title character suffers from a porn addiction made all the more worse from porn sites like RedTube and xHamster. As a bachelor, it’s not so much a…
If Terrence Malick is the master of the unnecessary voiceover, and Ang Lee is the master of the unnecessary split screen, then surely Baz Luhrmann is the unequaled master of the unnecessary — and over-the-top — mix of garish glitz, flash and explosive cinematechnics. His latest, The Great Gatsby, an ambitious tackling of the 1925…
Permeated by a sense of the sacred, Terrence Malick’s latest film points us to the transience of all things. Appropriately titled To the Wonder, the film has Malick’s stamp written all over it: Philosophical voice-overs uttered in hushed tones to a haunting orchestral soundtrack, panoramic displays of the physical beauty of nature, a story that…
It’s been done, this whole alien taking over a human’s body thing in movies. It’s been done and done better. The concept goes back at least to the 1950s with “The Thing from Another World” and the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Now, for the umpteenth time, we get the same premise — only…
