Prisoners Movie Review

Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners spends two hours being so good it comes as a bit of a disappointment that the resolution is so utterly conventional. For an investigative thriller it is almost unbelievably contemplative. It’s a movie that is more content to get into the minds of its characters than to dutifully land on action beats at the appropriate moments, although the action does arrive, often ferociously.

12 Years a Slave Movie Review

The terrible and embarrassing legacy of slavery is a dark mark on this country. It was a human atrocity that we have only just begun to understand. It remains, more than 150 years after its eradication, the defining factor in race relations. White people would not be where they are in terms of status and privilege without having held black people in bondage. And blacks continue to bear the burden of that time. I’m not sure any movie could possibly do perfect justice as a representation of the horrors of slavery, punishments, beatings, rapes, and other indignities that slaves suffered, but 12 Years a Slave comes closer than anything I’ve seen. This is possibly the least sanitized version ever put on film.

Looper Movie Review

When a filmmaker ventures down the wormhole of time travel as a narrative device, he’s setting his film up to be prodded and picked apart in the minutest detail to discover all the flaws and inconsistencies. The best time travel movies tend to be the ones that have some intelligence about the process and implications of traveling to the past, but mostly they succeed when the time travel becomes secondary to other elements in the film.

Take a film like Back to the Future, for example. Yes, without the time travel there is no story, but the breakneck pace, the good writing, the funny jokes all take precedence over the fact of Marty going 30 years into the past. In the case of Rian Johnson’s Looper, I could talk about a paradox that unravels the entire story if we follow logical consistency, but we’re dealing with a science fiction action film that relies on something that doesn’t exist and is only theoretically possible in terms of traveling forward in time. In Johnson’s film, the only time travel happens backward.

Short Cut Review: Ruby Sparks

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.

A wonderfully written little romantic comedy that plays on the notion that the early stages of a relationship are the best part. Even when Calvin's girlfriend is entirely his fictional creation come to life, things turn dour as Ruby exhibits wants, desires and personality. It's not afraid to take us into dark places, and smartly avoids the immature and base humor that is the hallmark of most contemporary romantic comedies.

Cowboys & Aliens Movie Review: An Interesting Melding of Genre Films

What a fascinating concept, the mixing of genres in Cowboys & Aliens, director Jon Favreau’s latest action spectacular with enough brains to rise slightly above the usual mediocre dreck. Why must it be inevitable that every science fiction film about alien invasion has either a contemporary or a futuristic setting? If you’ve ever wondered how men on horseback with six-shooters and rifles would fend off technologically superior alien invaders, Cowboys & Aliens is a mash-up that might satisfy your thirst for knowledge. At any rate, all alien invaders are by definition technologically superior to humans.

Knight and Day Movie Review

Knight and Day is absolutely the kind of cheap (and I’m not referring to the budget) mindless entertainment I should hate, but there was something about this Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz star vehicle that was really quite enjoyable.

The film is directed by James Mangold from a script by Patrick O’Neil. Mangold is establishing himself as a good action director whose indie roots with films like Heavy and Cop Land taught him not to lose sight of character development. His 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma is probably his best film, but I still think he has a substantial, if not great, film in him yet. He’s got a great feel for action pacing. Clocking in at 105 minutes, Knight and Day is a breath of fresh air from the bloated excess of the 2 hour plus action films that normally come from the big studios.

The Good Heart Movie Review: Spurning the Audience for No Good Reason

The Good Heart, the most depressing buddy comedy you’ll ever see, doesn’t offer much in the way of emotional investment, but what little goodwill it earns in its first 85 minutes is completely squandered in the most horrendously unearned ending in the history of cinema. Although maybe you have to give some credit to a movie that manages both that and the most high-minded philosophical fart joke in cinematic history. No, seriously.