UP IN THE AIR movie review
Up in the Air (2009)–**** When I walked out of Up in the Air, I had a feeling I don’t often get after seeing a Hollywood motion picture. As a matter of fact, I can honestly say I’ve never really had it. The closest thing I can remember to it is when I watched American Beauty on DVD in late-2000, almost a year after I had seen the film in theaters. I’m relatively young, so American Beauty‘s release was early in my self-education in film. On the occasion of that home video viewing, which followed a solid year of cinema consumption, I felt I had seen something. And with Up in the Air, I felt it too. It’s the feeling that I had just witnessed an American classic. Up in the Air is a rarity, a picture of depth...
Read MoreTHE BLIND SIDE Movie Review
The Blind Side (2009)–**1/2 There’s an argument to be made to whether The Blind Side, an unsentimental tale of inspiration, should have been made into a movie at all. There isn’t much conflict. There’s very little drama. And the protagonist, a young man from the wrong side of Memphis, isn’t someone you find yourself rooting for, but rather casually wondering what may derail him from making it. He does make it, of course. Anyone who has caught a recent Baltimore Ravens game may have seen Michael Oher, the real-life inspiration for the film, on the team’s offensive line. What’s inspiring about Oher’s tale isn’t his dramatic rise out from the projects. It’s how that rise became as undramatic as possible. That’s where Sandra Bullock comes in. Bullock plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, an upper-middle class interior designer who decides to...
Read MoreQuickie: The Road
The Road (2009)–** Quickie Review A father and son struggle to survive in an ashen wasteland left after an unknown cataclysm destroys the world as we know it. Director John Hillcoat treats this adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece like a Harry Potter book, focusing on the bleak landscape and atmospheric details rather than trying to get to the heart of the story. With sparse dialogue and detrimentally understated performances, The Road does better keeping people out of the characters’ minds than it does welcoming them in. Starring Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Michael Kenneth Williams, Garet Dillahunt and Kodi...
Read MoreMovie Review: AN EDUCATION
An Education (2009)–***1/2 Five or ten years from now, when people tell you what their favorite movie is, don’t be surprised if someone says An Education. It’s not a movie that will speak profoundly to everyone, but this sophisticated coming-of-age drama is one that will make those who can forgive its weak, rushed third act fall passionately in love with it. An Education tells the story of the clever, beautiful schoolgirl Jenny (Carey Mulligan) in a London suburb in 1961. Her father (Alfred Molina) is desperate to see her go to Oxford, where she will read English. And Jenny is well on her way to achieving his goal. That is until she meets David (Peter Sarsgaard). David is an older man, a worldly man. He has fashionable friends and wealth to spare. He can even talk Jenny’s conservative parents...
Read MoreMovie Review: A Serious Man
A Serious Man (2009)–**** It goes against conventional wisdom to even suggest that the Coen brothers could make a better film than Fargo. Their latest comedy, A Serious Man, however, comes daringly close. It’s more fiercely moralistic than any other Coen brothers film, without the brute force. And it’s more intensely personal than anything we’ve seen them produce, with moments of comic sadness that even regular Coen audiences won’t expect. A Serious Man brings clarity to the Coens’ filmography, but even this single film, which feels like a culminating work, delivers, in itself, on a level only the brothers could achieve. A Serious Man opens in Eastern Europe years prior to the main narrative. A Jewish man has just returned home, late, because the wheel on his cart broke. He tells his wife that a kind and generous soul...
Read MoreQuickie: Law Abiding Citizen
Law Abiding Citizen–**1/2 Quickie Review A man whose family was slaughtered during a home invasion goes after the justice system that allowed the murderer to get off with a slap on the wrist for testifying against his accomplice. What this action-thriller lacks in polished writing, it comes close to making up for in pure filmmaking. Just not close enough. Often muddled, even confused by its own basic details, the screenplay doesn’t give us the time to consider the moral and ethical dilemmas without a plot hole or silly contrivance. Still Gerard Butler’s domineering command of the screen, combined with Jamie Foxx’s star appeal, keeps us from looking at our watches. Directed by F. Gary...
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