Apparently starring in the suspenseful business thriller Inside Man inspired actor/director Jodie Foster, and years later when the script for Money Monster came along she jumped, but this time to be behind the camera, directing another taut, effect thriller. Money Monster revolves around TV investment celebrity Lee Gates (George Clooney), who is held hostage on the air by distraught loser Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell), who has invested every penny he owned in IBIS Global Capital, just to have…Read More
Review: Hail, Caesar!
Hollywood loves films about the motion picture industry, and generally does a terrific job with the topic. Singing in the Rain is a one of the best films ever made, and it’s about the coming of sound in cinema, as is the much more recent The Artist. And that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. More cinematic industry gazing: A Star Is Born, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Sunset Boulevard, S.O.B., Shampoo, Tropic Thunder, and the wry, dark and…Read More
Review: Tomorrowland
My daughter and I watch a lot of old movies. The previous era of cinema appeals to us is because of the underlying optimism and the comfort in knowing that the bad guy will get their comeuppance and the good guys will overcome, the proverbial happy ending. Life isn’t quite so graceful, unfortunately, but part of the draw is that older films offer a happier, more optimistic world. By contrast, modern cinema seems to often lack a moral compass…Read More
Review: The Monuments Men
I’m a sucker for films set in World War II, whether the European front or the Pacific front. The list of good WWII films is endless, but I’ll highlight some of my favorites, including Saving Private Ryan, Flags of our Fathers, and Tora! Tora! Tora! along with a few comic films set in the same era: Catch-22 and How I Won The War. What they all have in common is a certain gravitas, even the comedies….Read More
Review: Dallas Buyers Club
Some actors are the very same character in every movie. Think John Wayne or Cary Grant, George Clooney or Denzel Washington. It’s not that they lack range, it’s just that they don’t demonstrate it through either their choice of roles or how they choose to play the character. Dallas Buyers Club demonstrates the opposite, with Matthew McConaughey delivering a superb, Oscar-worthy performance as rodeo cowboy, two-bit hustler and unlikely AIDS activist Ron Woodroof. The film…Read More
Review: Gravity
I’m such a fan of what we science fiction fans call “hard sci-fi” that I’m the perfect audience for the new Alfonso Cuarón film Gravity. The trades had been abuzz for months with the camera techniques that were using during filming to create a true “zero gravity” effect and the IMAX 3D was supposed to be amazing. And yet, when I finally saw the film, I was bored. It’s not that the visuals aren’t amazing,…Read More
Best and Worst Films of 2010
According to Movieweb, there were 651 films released in 2010 and no, I didn’t see them all. In fact, there are some movies still on my to-watch list that I know will affect this article (including The Fighter and The Kids are All Right), but I hope to see them soon and add some additional commentary at that point. For now, however, I figure I saw maybe 100-150 new films this year, both clunkers and superb…Read More
Review: The American
Clooney as an assassin? Sounds like the recipe for a slam-bang action film with a dollop of cool, but that’s not what director Anton Corbijn has created with the very European The American. With the plethora of mindless action films in the last few months, however, I really liked the slow, thoughtful pace of this surprisingly action-free action movie. Clooney plays Jack, a gunsmith, craftsman and assassin. More a character study than anything else, the…Read More
The Best Films of 2009
I’ve spent the time to rant about the films I saw last year that I thought were the worst of the bunch, not just middling experiences, but genuinely “how on Earth did they ever raise the money to make this abomination?” movies where they either started out okay and slowly collapsed on their own weight (like Knowing) or were daft from the get-go (like Transformers 2). The worst of the bunch, though, must have been…Read More
Review: Up In The Air
When I was a kid, I used to think that business travel must be fabulous, a life of glamor punctuated by new cities, fancy hotels and anything you’d like to eat, each and every meal. Then I started to travel and realized just how exhausting and disheartening it is, how it can suck the life out of you and leave you restless both on the road and at home. Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) has just…Read More
Review: Fantastic Mr. Fox
In a world of children’s films increasingly characterized by technological accomplishment and sophisticated rendering in lieu of good old-fashioned storytelling, it was a breath of fresh air to enjoy the stop-motion Fantastic Mr. Fox. Tapping the considerable voice talents of George Clooney (Mr. Fox), Meryl Streep (Mrs. Fox), Bill Murray (Badger), Michael Gambon (Franklin Bean), Owen Wilson (Coach Skip), Willem Dafoe (Rat) and Jason Schwartzman (Ash), director Wes Anderson has managed to take the quirky…Read More
Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats
“Is this really based on facts?” a fellow critic asked the studio rep at the screening I attended of this film. “Does it matter?” I asked in response, and I was right, it doesn’t. Whether it’s true or just a riff on the craziness of modern military and contemporary culture, it turns out that The Men Who Stare at Goats is a witty and engaging satire in the same vein as the classic war films…Read More