Movie Reviews
(This review originally appeared at Reel Film News on August 10, 2012.) Author Robert Ludlum published a trilogy of novels concerning a man named Jason Bourne from 1980 through 1990, starting with The Bourne Identity. The Bourne Supremacy was published in 1986, followed relatively shortly by the final installment, The Bourne Ultimatum. In 2002, Swingers […]
Read More(This review originally appeared at Reel Film News on August 10, 2012.) Sometimes, a film’s genre definition tends to get turned completely on its head. Fernando Meirelles’ 360, for example, is a Crash-like film where the characters’ lives all intersect at one point or another, often through disparate circumstances. Right off the bat, describing it […]
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(This review was originally published on August 10, 2012 at Reel Film News) My wife told me she thought “2 Days in New York” felt a lot like a dream. I agreed with her, but I think she meant it as more of a compliment than I did. For me, it felt like running into a […]
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(This review originally appeared at Reel Film News on August 3, 2012.) Actually, the opening title as shown in the film is P.O.W. Portrait of Wally. P.O.W. could just be the initials of the title Portrait of Wally, or it could stand for “Prisoner of War”, which is how the infamous Egon Schiele painting is […]
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(This review originally appeared at Reel Film News on August 3, 2012.) The tagline for the Killer Joe posters reads “A TOTALLY TWISTED DEEP-FRIED TEXAS REDNECK TRAILER PARK MURDER STORY” over a picture of what looks to be a piece of fried chicken in the shape of the state of Texas, with some blood spatter […]
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(This review was originally published on August 3, 2012 at Reel Film News) “Portrait of Wally”, which is the collaborative effort of director Andrew Shea (“Forfeit”) and ex-NPR journalist David D’arcy, both of whom wrote and produced the film, comes across more like a commentary-laden case analysis than a documentary.
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(This review originally appeared at Reel Film News on July 27, 2012.) Before we start: on behalf of Reel Film News, we would like to offer our sincerest condolences to the victims of the Aurora shooting and their families. I had originally written an overlong piece about the merits of The Dark Knight Rises. There […]
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What happens when you want to make a film with the soul and heart of Zhang Yimou’s Hero, the complexity of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the family conflict of Curse of the Golden Flower, but generate no spirit of your own? You wind up with Chen Kaige’s Sacrifice, receiving its US theatrical […]
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(This review was originally published on July 27, 2012 at Reel Film News) “This is more like a riches-to-rags story,” laments David Siegel, founder and CEO of Westgate Resorts, which, as of when filming commenced on “Queen of Versailles”, was the largest timeshare company in the world. The septuagenarian real estate mogul wears a dyspeptic […]
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(This review was originally published on July 25, 2012 at Reel Film News) I was unaware before seeing “Ruby Sparks” that co-stars Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan are a real-life item. That explains a lot though; underneath some genuinely fine acting exists an undeniable chemistry between the two. I’m not talking about the traits of […]
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