The nervous hell of a new job interview is satirized, then sentimentalized, then psychologized in writer/director Anthony Garland’s tonally scattered short Ophelia. The titular character (played with fair restraint by Ali Mueller, “Category 5”) arrives on time in fancy business attire and has only a moment to size up her competition before being called in…
Making a movie that feels both realistic and satisfyingly entertaining is not an easy thing to do. In fact, the notion of producing a film that feels entirely true to life is almost antithetical to the cinematic framework. Life is often uncomfortable, random, ambiguous and inconsequential — traits that could understandably be seen as detriments…
Nightmarish visions abound in Romain Basset’s horror mystery Horsehead and the narrative elements are so tightly focused here that the picture’s success relies almost entirely on the effectiveness of those visions. Basset makes the bold move to let the visions swallow the story so that the movie threatens to topple off the edge of reality…
For all red-headed wannabe knights — there is hope! Justin (voiced by Freddie Highmore, “The Spiderwick Chronicles”) is not the most heart-throbbish animated character to grace the screen. His red hair is styled in a bowl-cut (perhaps to avoid Carrot Top mentions) and his ears are a bit pointy. Fortunately, the young boy has a…
John Lennon may have said it best with the line from Imagine, “You know I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” Walter Mitty is a dreamer as we can see in in 20th Century Fox’s imaginative trailer for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. He’s a pathetically average guy toiling away his days…
Just because there is a wealth of animated feature films out there does in no way mean all of them are worthy of our hard-earned bucks. Only a few are exceptional, a few more are decent, while most just float on the surface of pop culture for a few weeks as a true homage to…
Being called “undateable” is sort of like a team player being labeled “uncoachable,” not a strong recommendation. This label tags maturity-challenged Frances (Greta Gerwig) in Noah Baumbach’s warm-hearted comedy Frances Ha, a film that has genuine affection for its characters. Co-written by Baumbach and Gerwig and supported by an eclectic soundtrack that includes music by…
