On the surface, Anvil: The Story of Anvil looks like nothing more than a retread of Spinal Tap, even to the point of wondering, “are these guys actually real? I have never heard of them.” Anvil draws inevitable comparisons, but they are a real band, doing real work, feeling real creative and commercial frustration. [...]
James Cameron has always been an innovator. Whether it’s defining the gold standard for a female action lead or designing cameras and processes to make the exact film he is envisioning, Cameron is a technical wizard. Match his attention to detail and his creativity with the peerless effects and design team at Weta, [...]
Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) lives up to his nickname. He smokes and drinks and bangs groupies and slops around his existence like an exhausted walrus. When he gets on stage, however, his music sings to the heart and the sky, his clear voice full of life and emotion and genuine affection for his [...]
Writer/director Robert Siegel previously made a dramatic splash with his wonderful screenplay for The Wrestler. With Big Fan, Siegel shows his continued facility for taking a sad sack character who might otherwise be branded as a loser and making him sympathetic, even a little heroic in a quietly desperate way. Patton Oswalt turned [...]
A Single Man has such a simple premise, but one that is so ripe with promise, that it didn’t even need the added attraction of Colin Firth. George is a gay man (Firth) in 1961 who loses his lover, and copes in secret. It sounds sad, and it is. During the height [...]
A week in the life of a player in 1937, those early days of Orson Welles’ famed Mercury Theatre, might sound like it can’t encompass much, but you may be forgetting just what a towering figure Welles was. After seeing this film, you won’t seen forget it; nor will you soon forget Christian McKay who [...]
To prepare for this film, I read Alice Sebold’s dreamy novel, written from the perspective of Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) after she has already died. The novel wastes no time getting to the point of how she died, either. The rest is her watching Earth, trying to point her parents in the direction [...]
With a brief background on Nelson Mandela morphing from political prisoner/terrorist to president of a new South Africa, Invictus then leaps into the real focus of the story: Mandela’s drive to unify his countrymen through the national rugby team (long associated with apartheid) and their push for the World Cup. It’s an inspirational story, [...]
If this wasn’t a true story, it would seem incredibly pat and manipulative and impossibly rapid. The Blind Side was based on the book Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, by Michael Lewis, and follows the amazing story of Michael Oher from the underbelly of society to the spotlight. The story seems rushed, fueling its [...]
Up In The Air
Matinee with Snacks
Who better to play a man ho eschews human connections and possessions than George Clooney, career bachelor and ladies man? His character, Ryan Bingham, is an axeman for hire – sensitive to the toll of his work, but shielded by his own capacity to live as an island. [...]
