Blue Jasmine Movie Review

Woody Allen is well known for writing excellent female characters. They are realistic, they delve into the feminine psyche in a way most male writers never even attempt let alone achieve, and they are great roles for actresses. I’m not sure any other single director has been responsible for directing more actresses to Oscar nominations, at least while also failing to equal the feat for male actors. When you think of the iconic female characters he’s written it’s like a treasure trove of great female roles: Annie Hall; Maria Elena (Vicky Cristina Barcelona); Linda Ash (Mighty Aphrodite). His titular character in Blue Jasmine might very well be his best creation since Annie Hall.

Seven Psychopaths Movie Review

What is it with filmmakers who start out with some quirky little movie that gets a lot of recognition for its panache, or great writing, or great storytelling and then they’re given a big budget and bunch of movie stars and things just seem to run away from them? Martin McDonagh started out with In Bruges, which signaled the start of a promising career in the gangster/hitman genre, the kind of talky pictures about wretched individuals who nevertheless epitomize cool made famous by Quentin Tarantino. Seven Psychopaths is his second feature film, an absurd farce of a story about an Irish screenwriter named Marty (autobiographical much?) trying to write a movie called Seven Psychopaths (self-referential much?).

Hitchcock Movie Review

There is a speech delivered by Helen Mirren in Hitchcock that begins bluntly and forcefully, before becoming one of those acting moments that gets played over and over again at awards shows. It’s a moment of performance that can so quickly and easily become overwrought, but then you realize that Mirren is an actress of incredible skill, subtlety, and professionalism that she won’t let her performance overshadow her character. She plays Alma Reville, the great director Alfred Hitchcock’s long-suffering wife and behind-the-scenes collaborator. She holds the film together and although Hitchcock is ostensibly concerned with the making of Psycho, that’s really just a backdrop for the way their marriage functioned and occasionally faltered.

Hugo Movie Review

This review is based on the 3D version of the film. As this is only the second film I’ve seen in the contemporary 3D style I don’t feel I’m familiar enough with its uses and implementations to 100% accurately judge whether it’s any good or not. However, I have taken the liberty of commenting on my reaction to the 3D as I believe it is the critic’s duty to report his response to a film as completely as possible.

When I read that Martin Scorsese was going to make his next film in 3D and it was also going to be an adaptation of Brian Selznick’s children’s picture novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, my first reaction was to be simply dumbfounded. Why would the director of so many dark and violent films that deeply explore the human condition venture into such new territory? And why would the man who still insists on using film stock, a man who supremely values film history, shoot in 3D? Surely this must have been some kind of total commercial sellout. Well, the final judgment is yet to be determined as it often takes years for the critical and audience response to render a final verdict on a piece of pop culture’s place in the canon, but after seeing it I can say it makes a lot more sense now that Scorsese was drawn to this particular story and this particular use of 3D technology to make Hugo.