January 2012
6 posts
4 tags
Beasts of the Southern Wild - LIVE from Sundance
Sundance’s big feature award winner in 2012 is a post-Katrina-apocolypse-meets-Beyond-Thunderdome-meets-Newt & Ripley & pre-historic-beasts-as-aliens in the swamps of the Bayou-south.
Did you get all that?
Said another way…gritty-magical-apocolype-realism that is totally unique and unforgettable. Filmmaker, Benh Zeitlin, has succeeded in creating a film that even the most...
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Live From Sundance 2012: "Save the Date"
Stop the presses - we have a winner!
It’s hard to have a fresh, original take on the “awkward fumbling-into-adulthood of 20-something’s in L.A.” genre, but “Save the Date” nails it with a story & performances that are as surprising and pitch-perfect as “Juno” - and that’s high praise.
Can’t remember the last time I was in a theater...
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Live from Sundance 2012: "The Comedy"
Add the term, “recreational cruelty” to your vocabulary, and if you’re confused about what that might mean, wait for this polarizing indie film to hit your local cineplex.
This hard-to-stomach, but sometimes funny film, is a raw look at the trust fund babies from the Beavis & Butthead generation. Talk about a niche! And boy…are these guys best in small doses.
While...
3 tags
Midnight in Paris
Pitch-perfect Woody Allen - more nostalgia & romance than humor, but a delightful 90 minutes. Plenty of love letters have been written about all things Paris - particularly Paris in the 20’s - but Woody Allen has the courage and the chops to one-up all of them. Owen Wilson perfectly cast, and the historical characters come to life - from Hemingway to F. Scott and Zelda - are just as...
9 tags
Moneyball
Swing and a miss! This movie tells the wrong story! In fact, Michael Lewis wrote the book too soon as history has shown Moneyball focuses on the SECOND most interesting success story of the “stats will set you free!” baseball era.
On the surface, this is baseball for stat-geeks with Brad Pitt maxing out his “aww shucks I may be wrong but I’m gonna do it my way” charm...
3 tags
Another Year
Mike Leigh makes interesting movies, with fully fleshed out characters, and some of them (“Happy Go Lucky”) can really surprise and delight, but this one…not so much. It’s pretty dark with the only light coming from the tired hopefulness of the every-men and every-women that fill out the story. Special kudos to Leslie Manville for playing one of the most desperate and sad...