Movie Review: Paranormal Activity
Paranormal Activity–1/2* Paranormal Activity delivers on low-budget thrills. If that’s what you’re looking for from this sleeper hit of the fall, you can stop reading now. You’ll get what you want here, especially in the final 10 minutes. Enjoy. For anyone else (and I don’t know why you would want to see Paranormal Activity anyway), know this: you’ll be spending 86 torturous minutes with two people you wouldn’t even talk to at work, let alone root for. Watching Paranormal Activity, I understood every criticism I’ve ever read about the mumblecore film movement. How can we watch people of a certain age (mine) on film and not want to walk out of the theater, appalled by just how self-involved these people are? But mumblecore films work on an intellectual level, pointing subtle criticisms at the culture that this (my) generation...
Read MoreMovie Review: Irene in Time
Irene in Time (2009)–*** Were it not for Tanna Frederick, Irene in Time, Henry Jaglom’s most recent indie effort, wouldn’t be nearly as watchable as it is. But that’s the brilliance of Jaglom. He’s a smart enough director to realize he has a good thing when he’s got it. That’s also the allure of Frederick, a talented, emotionally limitless actress who could easily exit Jaglom’s world, but seems so perfect in it. Irene in Time tells the story of Irene (Frederick), a woman who is in search of a man who can live up to the image she’s created of her father. She goes on dates armed with tips and tricks she’s learned from relationships for dummies books. But what she’s really looking for is a man who has the same vision of her that her father once had....
Read MoreMovie Review: Spoiler Alert
Spoiler Alert (2009) Boy, am I glad that I liked Spoiler Alert. Something tells me that the film’s director, David Rakowiecki, would have a few ideas for what to do with an online film writer who has he gall to write something negative about his debut feature. Rakowiecki’s film tells the story of Brad Zuhl (Daniel Bartkewicz), online film critic and webmaster of the uber-influential TheGeek-Cave.com. On the night this geek opinion leader’s dream of becoming an actual filmmaker comes true, he gets an unexpected visitor to his basement apartment: Hollywood director Harrison Kane (Lars Stevens). Kane is a little sore about his Bones of the Dead being eviscerated on Zuhl’s site. So sore, in fact, that he’s come to kill the geek master. Kane’s career tanked after that negative review turned his kung-fu fighting skeleton spectacular into a...
Read MoreMovie Review: Inglourious Basterds
Inglourious Basterds (2009)–**** All of Quentin Tarantino’s films are about cinema, but Inglourious Basterds may be his first to harness cinema’s power to show us cinema’s power. This isn’t just a film about a group of Jewish-American soldiers killing Nazis guerrilla-style. Basterds is a film about movies–and one of the greatest at that. From the casting of superstar Brad Pitt in the lead role to moments where images flicker on the big screen in a theater filled with Nazis, Inglourious Basterds has one great conceit: Cinema can change history. Told in four chapters, Inglourious Basterds opens with a scene on a French dairy farm that introduces us to Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a.k.a “The Jew Hunter.” He’s a fiendish, cartoony Nazi officer who, as his nickname makes clear, is in charge of rounding up all the Jewish people...
Read MoreMovie Review: Severe Clear
Severe Clear (2009)–***1/2 Tomorrow may be your last chance to see Severe Clear in a theater when the film screens at LA’s Archlight Cinemas as part of IDA’s 13th Annual DocuWeeks showcase. (Click for ticket info.) I’ve sat on the a DVD screener of the film for a couple weeks now, partly because of the day job and partly because the last thing I really want to do is watch another Iraq War documentary. If you’re like me, feeling a little Iraq fatigue, you owe it to yourself to see Severe Clear, which does for Iraq War docs what The Hurt Locker did for narrative features. Told using DV footage shot by Mike Scotti and a few of his fellow marines, as well as voice over narration taken from Scotti’s memoir, Severe Clear leads us through the invasion of...
Read MoreQuickie: Julie & Julia
Julie & Julia (2009)–** Quickie Review Julia Child changes the world by introducing French cuisine to servantless American cooks. Years later, Julie Powell attempts to change her life by cooking her way through Child’s cookbook. Told using parallel narratives, this Nora Ephron dramedy is half great and half miserable. Meryl Streep inhabits Child’s skin, giving one of the best, most entertaining performances of her career. However, it’s the Julie Powell pity party, highlighted by a melodramatic performance from a miscast Amy Adams, that drains the energy from what could have been an amazing Child biopic. Also starring Stanley Tucci and Chris Messina. Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, directed by Nora Ephron, is now in...
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