It’s 1942 and World War II is raging almost everywhere on the planet. Allied spy Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) parachutes into occupied French Moroccan city of Casablanca. His mission: assassinate the Nazi ambassador to Morocco. To accomplish this audacious goal he has to meet up with his “wife” and cover Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard), who has spent the last few months ingratiating herself with the German occupation government and wrangling an invitation to the grand…Read More
Review: The Dark Knight Rises
I really enjoyed The Dark Knight Rises as another epic story from Chris Nolan. It has great action sequences, a tortured main character, interesting back story, a villain with layers we don’t begin to understand until near the end of the film, two love interests, Anne Hathaway in a skin tight leather jumpsuit (did I just say that?) and the cinematic vision of one of the very best directors currently working in Hollywood. Even better,…Read More
Review: Contagion
There are specific genres of films, certain themes, that I find highly appealing, and one of those is apocolyptic events. From the daft The Happening to the cheesy The Day After Tomorrow, if the world’s ending, if we’re all facing extinction as a species, if something really terrible is going to happen, I’m interested. I think this started with classic old sci-fi like The Day of the Triffids and The Day the Earth Caught Fire,…Read More
Review: Inception
Inception is one of the most complicated stories I have ever seen on the big screen, but if you can figure out what’s going on, it’s an amazing movie filled with mind-boggling visuals and an intriguing exploration of how our minds work and the subconscious. It might also be the best movie of the summer, if not 2010. The story takes place in a near future where companies send agents to steal secrets from within…Read More
Review: Nine
Films are dreams, whether the director is aiming for hyper-realism or whether we’re allowed to fly through the odd, the dreamy, the troubling of their imagination. Director Rob Marshall recognizes this and his Nine is a sexy, engaging, stylish and enlightening journey through the imaginative life of Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his many loves. At the beginning of the film, Guido, a famous Italian film director clearly modeled after the brilliant but eccentric Federico Fellini,…Read More
Review: Public Enemies
Biopics are an unusual challenge for a filmmaker because the storyline is already set, whether it makes sense and whether we can understand the motivations of the characters or not. As I watched the lush, but violent Public Enemies, I kept thinking that the reason there was no story, no backstory on the characters, and no depth to the film was just this reason: we were being presented with the sequence of events as they…Read More