Based on Karen Joy Fowler’s book of the same title, the Jane Austen Book Club film adaptation is not geared for anyone who is not familiar with Ms. Austen’s works. I don’t just mean you should have seen the movies or liked the books when you read them 10 years ago. I mean […]

Director Julie Taymor made a splash with her wildly popular and visually original stage production of the Lion King. She brought her hyperreal artistic sensibilities successfully to Titus and Frida on screen. In Across the Universe, Taymor makes a sort of movie musical out of Beatles songs, sung live by the characters. […]

Becoming Jane takes a stab at being a historical romance in the vein of Shakespeare in Love: an author coming into her own meets significant people, in particular a muse/love interest, informing the work left to the ages. Shakespeare’s life is poorly documented and so the mystery is tantalizing and unprovable. Jane Austen’s […]

Despite all appearances, the writer of this $1.5 million dollar (NZ; so $1,285,290 USD) film did not see Napoleon Dynamite until after making this movie. This begs the question: How universal is this odd sort of loser character? Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement’s character Jarrod is a passive, apathetic, self-centered insecure […]

If you have heard anything about this movie, it’s the tragic story of the sudden death of the writer/director costar just before the film premiered at Sundance. Hopefully, you will hear more about her last work once this movie is seen by more people. Admittedly, it is difficult at first to separate that […]

This film might have slipped entirely under my radar had not the local art-house mailing list told me it was directed by the guy that did The Closet (http://www.cinerina.com/reviews/the-closet/). That was all I needed. The French title, La Doublure means roughly The Stand-In, but I think naming it The Valet suits the tone […]

When I walked out of the theatre, I felt satisfied, as if I had sat down to a good meal at a new restaurant. I thought I had a lot of nice story things to chew on and appreciate…and then I forgot all about it. Signs of age or deceptively shallow filmmaking? […]

I’ll tell you up front – my (very chick movie oriented female) companion was disappointed by this film. She thought it was uneven, with too many valleys between our agreed-upon high points. I was so pleased by the high points (and again, there were many) that I was able to glide on their […]

After a testosterone-crumbling introduction, The Holiday settles in to become a surprisingly thoughtful, sweet, sad, funny, well-written movie. The premise is simple: two lovelorn women switch houses over the Christmas holidays to escape their problems. What happens after that is the stuff of older movies, back when movies overall were better – […]

I was so revolted by the heinous Hollywood marketing of Jane Austen’s classic (“Sometimes the last person on earth you want to be with is the one person you can’t be without” - I mean come on!) that I was tempted to skip it. The previews made Keira Knightly look as if she were […]