Cafe Society Movie Review

There’s not much left for Woody Allen to say in his movies, is there? He’s already been walking the same ground for decades, hitting the same themes and even repeating (or so it feels) zingers and one-liners. After fifty plus films in as many years, how could he not? He puts out a new movie every year like clockwork. Sometimes it’s as if he’s going through the motions and occasionally he gives us something inspired, as with Midnight in Paris or Blue Jasmine. His latest is Café Society, which is far better than the recent misfire of Magic in the Moonlight but still falling short of genuine genius.

Romancing the Stone Movie Review

The movies you loved as a kid sometimes turn out to be classics (i.e. Back to the Future and Star Wars) while others, it turns out, were really just not very good. Ah, the undiscerning view from a child’s perspective. When you’re a kid, a movie is good or not because it has excitement, adventures, romance, and comedy. For some adults I guess that never changes. Before Robert Zemeckis directed Back to the Future, he had a big commercial success in Romancing the Stone, a sort of Raiders of the Lost Ark knock-off starring Kathleen Turner as a dowdy romance novelist and Michael Douglas as a roughneck who saves her in the jungles of Colombia.

From My Collection: Shakespeare in Love Movie Review

I just recently rewatched Shakespeare in Love and it was a s good, if not better than I remember it. John Madden’s film of the fictional and comic fantasy of how the greatest romantic tragedy in literary history came to be was my favorite film of 1998. I saw it Christmas Day, part of a moviegoing tradition I diligently maintained from 1997 through 2005, and then again a few weeks after. I bought the DVD in 1999 and have watched it a few times over the years and now I have the Blu-Ray (yes, I’m a dinosaur) so I can enjoy it in HD whenever I please. I was one of few people to accurately predict its victory in the Best Picture Oscar contest. In the Oscar pool I used to manage, only three people out of about thirty made that pick over Saving Private Ryan.

Classic Movie Review: Lady and the Tramp

One of the Disney animated classics that I fondly remember from childhood is Lady and the Tramp. It ws re-released to theaters when I was a kid (before widespread home video releases and before Disney put them out on VHS). It felt more monumental to me then than it does now. At only 76 minutes, it is briskly paced and spare. There’s really not much story to tell and the big romance between Lady (voiced by Barbara Luddy) and the street mutt Tramp (Larry Roberts) is developed in one brief sequence when Lady is lost away from home and Tramp saves her from some unsavory dogs and takes her on a date to an Italian restaurant for the iconic spaghetti-eating scene, which is now one of the most indelibly romantic moments in cinema history.

Love Is Strange Movie Review

What a beautiful little movie Ira Sachs made with Love Is Strange. Alfred Molina and John Lithgow play George and Ben, a same sex couple who get married (thanks to a change in New York law) after almost forty years together as partners. George, who works as a music educator in a private Catholic school, is fired for not upholding the values of the Church. Essentially, his marriage stands in conflict with the public image of the Church. The decision is not unlike any company firing someone for publicly engaging in a behavior that reflects poorly on company values. However, his colleagues and most of his students and their parents knew he was gay and lived with Ben.

Magic in the Moonlight Movie Review

Jack English

There may not be a filmmaker more grounded in realism who also frequently touches on elements of magical realism than Woody Allen. Here is a man who has a strong philosophical view of life, death, and existence, who seems resigned to the idea that what you see is what you get and that there is no deity or afterlife. Here is a man who dabbled in magic tricks as a boy and who grew up to become one of the late 20^th century’s most important and prolific generators of the greatest magic tricks of all – motion pictures. For what are the movies but an illusion? Not only are the stories told fictional tales through which we, the audience, have a chance to live out fantasy wish fulfillment, but the physical process of film projection is a series of still photographs presented in such rapid succession that it gives the illusion of movement.

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.

The Fault in Our Stars Movie Review

From the writers of (500) Days of Summer I expected much better in a romance film involving two teenage cancer patients. The Fault in Our Stars, directed by Josh Boone, is not cloying or mawkish, but it is oh so precious – relentlessly so. It is constantly aware of how perfect a movie it’s so desperately trying to be. I can even sort of tell from this movie that the source novel is likely similarly insistent on its sense of perfection in its characters and plotting.

The story is narrated by Hazel (Shailene Woodley), a seventeen-year old with stage four cancer that has left her with a lung ailment that demands twenty-four hour attention from an oxygen tank. Woodley is a talented actress whom I have greatly admired and here she really holds the movie together. Without her performance, exuding youth along with naturalism and a realistic outlook on her situation that you wouldn’t expect from a girl her age, the movie doesn’t work. But Marc Webb’s and Scott Neustadter’s screenplay pushes too hard on those buttons that make Hazel seem too intelligent, too over it, too cynical to go in for the platitudes and clichés associated with her disease.

From My Collection: Brokeback Mountain Movie Review

I read “The New Yorker” magazine with some regularity. Each issue has a short story included that I usually start, but don’t finish. They rarely grab hold of me. But I went back and took a look at E. Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” which first appeared in October 1997. It is an absolutely brilliant example of economy of story and character development. She squeezes more information into a single line of dialogue than other writers can get onto a page and fifty times the words. She won an O. Henry award for the story.

From My Collection: Bright Star Movie Review

Depicting an artist at work in a film is a tricky thing. The possibilities are greater when dealing with the visual arts because the process of creation is dynamic. But when it comes to filming the story of a writer, what can the filmmaker do to depict process? After all, what is a writer’s process in the majority of cases if not to sit at a desk and think…and write…and drink coffee…and think…and wait for ideas or inspiration? This does not make for very interesting cinema. So the most interesting films centered on writers tend to focus on something that is only tangentially connected to the writing or the finished product. Jane Campion’s Bright Star was a mesmerizing love story to me when I first saw it nearly four years ago and it remained so when I watched it again recently. The movie circumvents the problems of filming a writer’s life and work by making the story about the poet John Keats’ three year unconsummated love affair with Fanny Brawne.

The Invisible Woman

In the little-known and seldom told tale of Charles Dickens and his much younger lover, director Ralph Fiennes brings a vitality that is often lacking in staid period costume dramas, As an actor, he imbues Dickens with life. It’s easy to imagine him as a hard and severe man what with his novels dealing with orphans, urchins, tough disciplinarians, cruelty, and war. But as played by Fiennes and written by Abi Morgan, he is playful, youthful, and full of vibrancy.

The Spectacular Now Movie Review

James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now is a refreshing depiction of teenage life, friendship, romantic relationships, and angst. Its main character, Sutter (Miles Teller), is the school’s life of the party. He’s fun and funny, popular among the ‘right’ people, and has an on again-off again beautiful girlfriend, who looks like the all-American Homecoming Queen. Like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, this is as close to the spirit of John Hughes as we’ve seen, in the sense of a writer who gets the voice and troubles of the American teenager.

Her Movie Review

What direction are we headed in with ubiquitous technology that becomes smarter year after year? Our smart phones, tablets, and other devices respond more and more effectively to our persona needs. Even voice technology for communicating your wants and tasks is possible. So how far away from artificial intelligence are we? That question is less important than how we handle it once it’s here. Previously, The Matrix and AI have dealt with issues related to machines that can think, reason, and even emote, but Spike Jonze’s Her tackles the romantic relationship aspect directly.

Blue Is the Warmest Color Movie Review

Is a three hour running time for a romantic drama a little indulgent? In general, I’d say it probably is, but there’s no one size fits all answer. If the story is suited to it and it’s compelling enough to carry you through, then why not? The French drama Blue Is the Warmest Color, winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes, takes cinematic romantic love to rarely touched emotional depths. The epic length didn’t feel so long to me, which must be viewed as testament to the humane and sensitive direction by Abdellatif Kechiche and the incredible and brave performances by the two female leads, Adéle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux.

Before Midnight Movie Review

Roger Ebert talked about coming back to Fellini's 8 1/2 about every decade and having a very different reaction to and feelings about Guido each time. Obviously the character hadn't changed, but Roger had. So as he matured, so did his perception of the film. It's in a somewhat similar vein that I have found myself approaching what Richard Linklater (and also Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who are equal collaborators in the story and screenplay process) has done with the Before Sunrise triolgy. That first film was a big deal for my high school friends when it came out, though I skipped it at the time. I caught up with it finally before its sequel Before Sunset was released. I admired Before Sunrise, but I was enamored with Before Sunset. Now that I've seen the most recent installment, Before Midnight, which is nine years after the last film and eighteen after Jesse and Celine first met on a Vienna train, I can say I love it even more. But then I wonder if my expanding admiration for this series has more to do with the way I've changed along with Jesse and Celine over the years.

Don Jon Movie Review

Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s acting career has been loaded with good choices. He has starred in unique twists on familiar genres with director Rian Johnson, appeared in mammoth event films for Christopher Nolan, and even his populist choices like the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer or the thriller Premium Rush have been pleasant exceptions to the rule. That’s why I had high hopes (perhaps a bit too lofty) for his writing and directing debut Don Jon. It looked like another great departure from the usual romantic film bullshit and that it might really have something to say, being about a man who can’t make an intimate connection with a woman because he’s far too enamored with Internet pornography.

Enough Said Movie Review

I didn’t see any eulogies for James Gandolfini earlier this year that didn’t talk about how surprisingly good an actor he was and capable of real heart in spite of his tough-guy persona and sometime typecasting. Prior to “The Sopranos” he mostly portrayed heavies and after that he became indelibly linked to the role of Tony. But for a taste of just how incredible he could be even if you strip away the rough veneer and harsh language, take a look at the romantic comedy Enough Said, where he and co-star Julia Louis-Dreyfus are divorcees who start dating one another.

To the Wonder Movie Review

“Weak people never bring anything to an end themselves. They wait for others to do it.”

There’s a reason I have such trouble remembering details from any of Terrence Malick’s films. He composes them with fleeting touches. There are no traditional movie scenes involving events or actions coupled with dialogue. These are the things that are easy to recall: “Remember that scene when so and so says…?” With Malick the best you get are snapshots that almost float freeform from one to another. They are like memories of a life remembered, says star Ben Affleck in one of the DVD extras. Even the one Malick film I’ve seen more than once, The Thin Red Line, stands in my memory more as a series of images in no particular order, but because there’s no real A to Z plot there’s no glue to hold it together in my mind.

From My Collection: Before Sunset Movie Review

The way Before Sunset improves upon its predecessor is simply marvelous. Before Sunrise is well-regarded for its excellent writing, interesting and intelligent conversations, and romanticism. The sequel has all of that plus more relaxed and self-assured performances from Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, and a more mature level of discussion and philosophy that is, at least for the moment, closer to my own ways of thinking now that I am roughly the same age as Jesse and Celine.

Short Cut Movie Review from My Collection: Before Sunrise

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.

I originally missed the big brouhaha over Before Sunrise in 1995. I was in high school and many of my friends went nuts for it. It barely interested me then, perhaps specifically because so many of my friends were so gaga. I’ve always tended to reject, sight unseen, anything that generates such feverish fandom. Then over the years it slowly cemented its place in the cultural pantheon of independent film. Then Richard Linklater made a sequel and I decided it was finally time to take a look at it.