Bouncing along the plot potholes of Revolutionary Road
Emotional abuse and marital discord have not been this explicitly depicted on screen since Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton devastated each other and another young couple in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The barbs slung in that older film were exchanged between a husband and wife, long-married and bitter. Edward Albee’s play on which it [...]
Bielski Brothers inhabit shallow narrative in action-styled Defiance
Defiance, one of several Third Reich-themed films arriving in cinemas this awards season, is a marginally enthralling Hollywood entertainment. Director Edward Zwick has proven a capable hand over the years at making solidly entertaining action films (The Last Samurai, Glory) that also strive at a message of slightly greater importance. Written by Zwick and Clayton [...]
Van Sant milks history for understated biopic
Director Gus Van Sant has taken a break from his often inaccessible forays into (almost) experimental film to make Milk, a very typical Hollywood biopic about Harvey Milk, the nation’s first openly gay man to win major elected office and then assassinated shortly thereafter. I don’t use ‘typical’ pejoratively, rather as an observation of how [...]
Seven Pounds and 118 minutes of incoherence
Scene: Ben Thomas (played with unending weepiness by Will Smith), despondent, in close-up makes a 911 call to report his own impending suicide.
Cut to: Ben swimming in the blue Pacific. His voiceover, in pressing sadness, informs us, “In seven days God created the world. And in seven seconds I shattered mine.” Yet I recall God [...]
Review: Eastwood’s Growling Gran Torino
The last few years have brought Clint Eastwood a great deal of critical success as a director. He’s recently had a four film streak beginning with Mystic River in 2003 that have brought three Best Picture Oscar nods, including a winner in Million Dollar Baby, and renewed praise for the aging movie star. This year [...]
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