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What if Crash (2004) had been good? You might find yourself asking yourself this question after you see Susanne Bier’s Academy Award-winning IN A BETTER WORLD. And you really should see it. Featuring two stories that are mostly separate from each other yet tightly interwoven in the end, In a Better World handles with aplomb what Crash bashed us in the face with: deep, tragic [...]
If you think war movies are at their most affecting when they narrow their scope significantly, focusing on a single event and its repercussions, rather than explaining strategy and re-enacting great battles, the Dutch movie WINTER IN WARTIME might be for you. Nazi-occupied Holland, 1945. Near the end of World War II in a snow-covered village, thirteen-year-old MICHIEL (Martijn Lakemeier) is drawn into the Resistance [...]
Think Dead Poets Society with girls. Only, Miss G. ain’t no Mr. Keating, and unfortunately, director Jordan Scott (daughter of Ridley) ain’t no Peter Weir. Not yet, anyway. CRACKS is set in a 1930s elite British boarding school for girls. The story focuses on the school’s “diving team,” a group of pre- to late-teen girls who never actually compete against any other teams because, well, [...]
BLACK DEATH is a movie you ought to avoid like… well, if not like the plague, at least like a nasty head cold. A film whose pedigree rests on perennial supporting cast member Sean Bean (“Ronin,” “Patriot Games,” “National Treasure”) as its star has already begun on the wrong foot. There are some “small, serious film” producers in the credits here (“The Last Station,” “Mrs. [...]
Revenge is a dish best served wet. This seems to be the message Korean filmmaker Kim Ji-woon wants us to glean from the shock-violence of I SAW THE DEVIL. The wet part is, of course, liters of blood, body parts, sex crimes and intentional cripplings. Knives and improvised weapons complete the recipe for the gory soufflé whipped up by stars Choi Min-sik (OLDBOY) and Lee [...]
“Les hommes ne font jamais le mal si complètement et joyeusement que lorsqu’ils le font par conviction religieuse.” “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” –Blaise Pascal This quote encompasses the primary message of the French film OF GODS AND MEN (Des Hommes et Des Dieux), written and directed by Xavier Beauvois (“The Young Lieutenant,” “According [...]
THE OTHER WOMAN was adapted from the novel “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits,” by Ayelet Waldman. This fact is worth mentioning up front, because in any film adaptation of a novel inevitably there will have to be decisions made about what to include and what to cut, the scope of a novel usually being much greater than can be covered on film in two hours [...]
I suppose it can be fun to see a bad movie. Something that just doesn’t hit the mark, and is unintentionally funny, like “Leprechaun 2,” or “Battlefield Earth,” or “Avatar.” (ok, I’m kind of kidding about that last one. Kind of.) But what do you do when you are faced with a movie that is somehow in actual theatrical release, and has all of the [...]
What do you expect from an action movie? Guns? Check. Cars? Check (sort of). Hottie? Um, check (thank you, supermodel Mini Anden). Death? Check check check check check check check check check check check check check check… check please? Why let a nameless bad guy just get shot without a close-up-from-behind view of his melon exploding in front of the camera? Why toss another one [...]
Peter Weir is an amazing filmmaker. How else can you sum up the breadth and quality of movies as diverse in tone and scope as “The Year of Living Dangerously,” “Witness,” “Dead Poets Society,” “Green Card,” “The Truman Show” and “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World”? These are films of substance that are also a lot of fun to watch. Movies hailed [...]
