This 2009 Spanish film starts out very promising and so is all the more disappointing when it doesn’t fulfill its promise. Watching the first third of it I became deeply aware that the way a film is shot and edited, the language of film-making, has a distinctive national accent. I’m used to the flavor of Japanese films and American films set in Japan. I think Map of the Sounds of
August 17, 2011
Super 8
As movies go, 2011 is the summer of the aliens. Of the three I’ve seen this month, I think that Super 8 captures a kind of innocent magic that is lacking in Attack the Block or Cowboys and Aliens. Maybe it’s manufactured Spielbergian magic but, somehow, J.J. Abrams never falls completely into the schmaltz that the man he’s paying homage does. (Spielberg produced and Abrams worked with him on earlier
June 11, 2011
Midnight in Paris
Manhattan meets Back to the Future meets Before Sunset. The story is thin, more of a short story subject than a novel. Not enough to flesh out an entire movie. It’s concept-driven rather than character-driven. The concept being that when we let nostalgia light up the past we become blind to the beauty of the present. We romanticize the good ole days at the expense of living fully in the
May 28, 2011
Thor
Pretty much what you’d expect. I know. That isn’t really biting analysis. The boy and I had good fun splurging (diet-wise) on a couple of beers and the Alamo Drafthouse’s “The Godfather” pizza. The theater was dark and air-conditioned. Summer’s here. Bring on the mindless entertainment. The movie was competent but predictable. We both felt that the earthbound scenes brought the movie down. Those scenes were mundane in both its
April 2, 2011
Source Code
The three of us were engaged in this movie while watching it but it didn’t leave us much to talk about afterward. We cared about the characters and the outcome of their struggle. The movie wisely chooses to keep its focus very narrow rather than distract us with too much backstory, subplots, or secondary characters. We learn about the situation and the world as Jake Gyllenhaals’ character does, and this
March 26, 2011
Jane Eyre (Fukunaga)
No movie adaptation of Jane Eyre is likely to please me; the most I can hope for is that I don’t wince too much. Jane Eyre was my first favorite book, the first book I connected to. Our relationship began when I was 14, seeing the Susannah York/George C. Scott adaptation on TV’s Hallmark Hall of Fame. By that all other adaptations are judged. This 2011 version leaves me cold.
January 14, 2010
Up in the Air
The unbearable lightness of being.
Bottom Line: Recommended. Urbane fun. Great acting. Great dialog. Only us INTJ types will bristle at the message.
January 18, 2008
Juno
A celebration of the functional family without any sticky sentiment.
Bottom line: Recommended
January 7, 2007
Children of Men
“It’s not about imagining and being creative, it is about referencing reality. So — the cinematographer, he said that not a single frame of this film can go by making a comment about the state of things. So everything became about reference — and not reference about what is around, like, oh, I’m walking around, and this is what I saw on the street, but about how this has relevance in the context of the state of things, of the reality that we are living today.” — Alfonso Cuaron Interview with Kim Voynar in Cinematical
August 10, 2006
Match Point
Do you have to sympathize with a character to find him interesting? I find myself attracted by otherness, an alien-ness that I don’t understand.
December 9, 2005
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
The power of myth.