Short Cut Review: Snow White and the Huntsman

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

The wooden acting of the two eponymous leads, Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth, sink this updated version of the classic fairy tale almost as quickly as the decision to turn it into an action and special effects spectacle. Several narrative inconsistencies don't exactly help either. However, the special effects are truly amazing, involving some of the most detailed and effective use of CGI in recent years. Probably the best part of the entire movie is the extraordinary cast used (with the aid of mind-blowing effects) to play the dwarfs: Bob Hoskins; Ray Winstone; Toby Jones; Ian McShane; Eddie Marsan; and Nick Frost among them.

Enemy at the Gates Movie Review

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

Jude Law is an actor who exudes tremendous energy in any role he takes. He became a star and earned an Oscar nomination in The Talented Mr. Ripley as an American playboy living the high life in the south of Italy. In Enemy at the Gates, a new film by Jean-Jacques Annaud, he plays a Russian soldier during WWII elevated to hero status by his skills as an expert marksman. In every scene, Law boils with intensity and sinks deep within the story.

The story (based loosely on fact) is of a young soldier in the Russian army helping a tired nation fend off the Nazi regime at the Battle of Stalingrad. The opening battle sequence will warrant comparisons to Spielberg's harrowing invasion of Normandy in Saving Private Ryan. Both are bloody and seem to be completely futile attempts at victory even though we know that the Allies won at Normandy and that the Russians halted the German advance at Stalingrad.