From the page to the stage to the screen, it’s been quite the journey for Les Misérables. Once Victor Hugo’s novel, then Cameron Mackintosh’s stage musical, and now Tom Hooper’s movie, the beloved tale of lives in the gutters of 19th century France hits the big screen in musical form looking, well, almost identical to…
I’ll cut to the chase in my description of Playing for Keeps right away. It’s simply “Kicking & Screaming” with sex — and without Will Ferrell (if the two are mutually exclusive). It also proves that if you are Gerard Butler and arrive in town to coach a child’s soccer team, several deranged women will…
Why is the Twilight series exponentially more popular than the more intriguing “Interview with the Vampire?” Anne Rice’s Louis and Lestat witness history, carry around significant emotional baggage, and speak dialogue worthy of a screenwriter. The Twilight Saga vampires are wooden caricatures, repeat the 12th grade over and over again, and carry on some of…
Dare I say another fairy tale revisioning is coming to theaters in 2013? Okay, I’ll say it (just don’t accost me for doing so). Loosely based off of Jack and the Beanstalk comes Jack the Giant Slayer. The Warner Bros. movie uses most of the elements of the fairy tale — giants and a beanstalk…
Longing loneliness and rich romanticism collide in Tabu, each more a feeling than an idea, each dominating a portion of Miguel Gomes’ emotionally oppositional drama. Split nearly down the middle, the movie opens with a prologue and then devotes half of the following picture to part one (titled “Paradise Lost”) and the other half to…
The Oranges borrowed the underlying suburban malaise of “American Beauty” and remolded it into a comedy. West Orange, New Jersey resembles the 2000 Best Picture winner but the atmosphere is different. The characters still make horrible choices which impact their immediate families and friends, but the looming dread and depression are replaced by a lighter…
I wager there are not too many people who would raise their hands to go back in time to high school. College? Yes. But high school, you would have to be out of your mind to go back to the cliques, emotional turmoil, bullies, and hormones, unless you were a football player of course. The…
