From My Collection: 25th Hour Movie Review

In 2002, New York City lay beaten and bruised, injured and left for dead but not without some bite left in her. Certainly the city was ready and willing to dole out punishment to anyone who intended harm again. It’s a lot like the dog Doyle at the opening of Spike Lee’s 25^th Hour. Someone has abused him, but he lashes out at Monty Brogan (Edward Norton), who only wants to help. Monty takes Doyle in and when the story picks up a year later, the dog is reasonably normal while the city is still reeling from catastrophe.

From My Collection: Rounders Movie Review

I reviewed this film sixteen years ago in the Connecticut College Voice. It is far too embarrassing to republish the original so in revisiting the film, here is my new and updated reviews.

For a brief time in the 90s and early 2000s, director John Dahl was establishing himself (in my estimation, at least) as a maker of dark and fascinating tales of low moral character or the underbelly of places we thought we knew. In 1998 he brought us, via a screenplay by David Levien and Brian Koppelman, to the underground and illegal poker scene of New York City in Rounders. He showed us a seedy version of New York that stands outside the realm of most Hollywood movies. And it’s populated with a cast of characters, most of whom you wouldn’t be too quick to invite into your home.

Everyone Says I Love You Movie Review

Woody Allen’s career has been a lengthy string of annual hits or misses. Part of what makes him so compelling a filmmaker is how he dives right in and commits himself even to the ones that aren’t so great, just to keep himself working and putting out new material every year. His movies have a way of changing over time – for me at least – so that The Purple Rose of Cairo seemed a lesser effort, a whimsical throwaway, when I was twenty, but when I revisited it at about thirty-one, there was greatness I had missed. Sometimes it goes the other way, as with Everyone Says I Love You, which I liked a lot more seventeen years ago than I did the other day.

The Grand Budapest Hotel Movie Review

I’ve just written about Rushmore and touched on the great stylistic difference between Wes Anderson’s earliest films and the techniques he uses in his latest. The Grand Budapest Hotel is a great example of how Anderson’s stylized world, whimsical flights of fancy, and self-conscious artifice have grown and joined together to blend into a harmonious vision.

I was a true Anderson enthusiast through The Royal Tenenbaums, but he lost me until Fantastic Mr. Fox, which struck me as the absolute perfect representation of what he has always tried to accomplish. The Grand Budapest Hotel has brought him back completely into my good graces and though it contains moments that are so previously Wes Anderson-y that it risks becoming a parody of his own style, it somehow reached me in surprising and new ways.

The Bourne Legacy Movie Review

Tony Gilroy, so desperate along with Universal Studios, to continue the cash cow of the Jason Bourne film series that he personally crafted and adapted from books to films, went ahead with a fourth film even after Matt Damon, the series’ eponymous hero, bowed out. How can you have a Bourne film without Bourne? They could have decided to make it something like the Bond series, replacing the actor periodically as they age out of the role, providing the character contemporary problems to confront. But then it would have run the risk of copycat syndrome, I guess. So instead Gilroy, with the help of his brother Dan, decided with The Bourne Legacy to keep it all in the same universe, but provide a new protagonist in Aaron Cross, a super-assassin involved in a program similar to the Treadstone project that created Bourne. It’s an expansion of the Robert Ludlum series of books, taking the title, but nothing of the story, from the fourth book, which wasn’t even written by Ludlum. Confused? It doesn’t matter because The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum had already deviated far from Ludlum’s novels.

Moonrise Kingdom Movie Review

The whimsical world of Wes Anderson has returned in Moonrise Kingdom, his seventh feature film and just the latest to be populated by characters from a fantasy vision of the world that lies just beyond anyone’s actual experience of it. Anderson likes to set his films in veritable islands unto themselves: a Manhattan mansion that seems part of a fictionalized New York I’ve never seen; a private school that offers a most ambitious student a lot of leeway; a train across the Indian subcontinent; a submarine (that one offered up his most capricious film to date); and now a literal island that looks (on the map presented by Bob Balaban’s on camera narrator) a little like Fisher’s Island, NY.

The Incredible Hulk Movie Review

The Incredible Hulk has the distinction of being not only the best teaser for The Avengers, but perhaps the most capable of standing alone, the most brisk in its storytelling. It falls somewhat short of Iron Man, which elevated the bar slightly by having a charismatic actor and hero in Robert Downey, Jr., who really kept those films light on their feet. Edward Norton in the Bruce Banner role is more sullen and brooding, as anyone with a Hulk affliction likely would be. He can’t risk being around anything stressful or anger-inducing lest he transform into a huge green rage monster, tearing up everything in sight and then waking up nude in another country (his first incident in the film takes him from Brazil to Guatemala).

The Score Movie Review: The Uniting of Three Legends of Their Time

This review was written in July 2001 and is presented here for the first time.

Who would have thought that one movie could assemble the three greatest method actors from three generations? Getting that perfect dream cast together to watch three men so skilled at their art working with, off and against each other? Director Frank Oz's new heist thriller The Score does just that with Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro and Edward Norton.

Frida Movie Review

This review was written at the end of 2002 with the intention of publishing it on a website that no longer exists. The unusual structure is a remnant of the requirements of that site. It is published here for the first time.

Synopsis: Biopic about the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. The film chronicles her life in a series of anecdotes as she meets, falls in love with and marries fellow artist Diego Rivera. Kahlo endures a tragic accident that leaves her crippled for life. She uses the enduring pain to fuel her painting which expresses her dark and somber moods as well as the excitement she found in a life with Rivera. That excitement lasts only until she exposes his lack of fidelity and loyalty to her. Late in life, Kahlo and Rivera took in Leon Trotsky and his wife after they fled into exile in Mexico. The film suggests that an affair takes place between Kahlo and Trotsky. This becomes a way for her to hurt the man she loved and who hurt her more than the trolley accident that left her in physical pain for life.

Scoop: First I must admit that I knew next to nothing of Frida Kahlo's life or art before seeing director Julie Taymor's biopic Frida. I knew only that she was married to Diego Rivera, the Mexican artist who was a Socialist and once included a portrait of Lenin in a mural he painted in the lobby of Rockefeller Center (the mural was promptly destroyed).

Whether or not Taymor's vision of Kahlo, working from a screenplay by Gregory Nava (El Norte) and others, based on Hayden Herrera's book, is factually accurate is irrelevant. What matters is whether the material presented on screen makes for good film drama. The answer is a definitive "Yes."

Movie List: Contemporary Screen Actors Very Much Deserving of an Oscar

Winning an Academy Award takes a kind of perfect storm confluence of events.

It's not just talent that will get you there. Just look at Al Pacino, who suffered 7 losses (including monumental performances in classic films such as The Godfather, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon) before finally taking the prize for Scent of a Woman, the least deserving of all his nominated performances. Many people say the same for Paul Newman who finally won for The Color of Money.

Certainly talent plays a big part, but it's also necessary to have the right role. Most people recognize that certain roles are juicier than others, thus garnering more attention and awards. The key types include biographical characters, preferably heroic in some way (George C. Scott and Ben Kingsley); disabled (mentally or physically) individuals (Tom Hanks and Geoffrey Rush, among many others); going ugly or playing against type (Charlize Theron and Denzel Washington).

It also helps to be a fairly well-established actor to win the award. It is more common for women to win the Oscar for debut or early career performances than for men, but still, the vast majority of winners, particularly in the lead categories, are well-liked Hollywood actors.