Southpaw Movie Review

Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw is a little chaotically scripted by Kurt Sutter with plot points that are occasionally unbelievable, nonsensical, or irrelevant, but it is Fuqua’s most restrained directing effort I can recall and contains enough moral uplift that it just crosses the line of what’s worth watching as a minor diversion.

Jake Gyllenhaal is impressive as Billy Hope, the light heavyweight champion of the world. Hope (and Gyllenhaal by extension) is physically imposing with a ripped torso and biceps. He has an anger control problem that remains mostly confined to the ring. So that he garners our sympathies, he’s got a beautiful wife, Maureen (Rachel McAdams), and daughter, both of whom he adores and dotes on. Maureen doesn’t want him to keep fighting because his style allows him to endure punch after punch until he’s angry enough to pummel his opponent. His manager (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) wants him to sign a three fight deal.

Good Morning, Vietnam Movie Review

To watch Good Morning, Vietnam is to see Robin Williams at his best, at the top of his game. There’s a reason he earned his first Oscar nomination playing Adrian Cronauer, an Armed Forces Radio DJ who takes a transfer from his cushy post in Greece to Saigon during the war – or Conflict as it is referred to in the movie as in the military and political arenas of the 1960s.

Lee Daniels' The Butler Movie Review

It’s not so much that Lee Daniels’ The Butler is a bad movie, but that it’s completely toothless. Here’s a movie made by a black filmmaker whose audacious breakout was Precious, a film that doesn’t dare shy away from the hard circumstances of being black in America, specifically of being black and desperately poor in America. The brunt of the problem with the story is in Danny Strong’s screenplay, which drew on a Washington Post article about a black man who worked in the White House as a butler through eight Presidential administrations for inspiration. Still, Daniels chose the material to direct. And I’m not insisting that a black filmmaker must be consigned to telling black stories or that when he does, they always have to be gritty, but it seems to me there is some moral imperative to battle and to make audiences feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately, The Butler is so intent on being a moneymaker for the studio that it compromises pretty much all of its values so it can appealing to a mass audience.

Panic Room Movie Review

I’ve said recently in relation to The Social Network that director David Fincher is a talent I’ve been following closely since his second feature film Seven. He is one of the most original and unique directors of genre films working in Hollywood. Whether it’s the science-fiction horror of Alien 3 or the detective thriller of Zodiac, Fincher imbues each of his films with a distinctive visual style. You’ll never doubt that you’re watching one of his films.

Fincher has also been one of the best filmmakers at employing digital effects to enhance his stories, rather than as a means of shorthand. He uses CGI in places you’d never imagine. I was stunned to discover how much of Zodiac was shot against green screen. The seams are invisible. Although he employed a great deal of CGI in Fight Club it was Panic Room where it became obvious how much he relied on it. Most of the camera set ups and movements would not be physically possible without digital tricks.