From My Collection: Garden State Movie Review

I really liked Garden State ten years ago. At the time I was still very much into a certain indie sensibility that rejected the mainstream for its own sake and expressed the ennui of being in your mid-20s and without direction, feeling like your parents’ completely screwed you up. Over the years as I thought about the movie – and I’ve begun thinking about it more recently because it’s ten years old and Zach Braff’s follow-up has finally arrived in cinemas – I thought of it as annoyingly precious, too perfect in its indie romantic sensibility. But watching it again I found it really holds up well. I was remembering it all wrong. Braff is a romantic softy at heart and the sappy feel-good ending is a little tacked on in the interest of living out some romantic fantasy, but all in all, Garden State works.

Oz the Great and Powerful Movie Review

Remember when the great advance in film technology was having animated characters interact with human actors? From the simplistic designs of Mary Poppins to the sophisticated effects of Who Framed Roger Rabbit the union of live action and animation was a marvel used sparingly. Today we have Oz the Great and Powerful which is a demonstration of what happens when that technology runs amok.