Movie Reviews

All Roads Lead Home

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  • Title: All Roads Lead Home
  • IMDB: link

Belle (Vivien Cardone) is forced to learn some pretty tough life lessons at the young age of 12. She loses her mother in an automobile accident and blames her father, Cody (Jason London) an animal control officer in Kansas City, for pulling the plug and ultimately gets to go live with Grandpa Hock (Peter Coyote) who trains and sells horses, for a short summer. Cody believes that his wife’s father can help straighten Belle out and get her on the right track.

While dealing with Grandpa Hock’s cold streak, Belle uncovers a friend in Basham (Evan Parke) a work hand on her grandpa’s farm. As the two grow close and start to see the similarities between them, she notices that Basham has a kind heart towards all animals and explains to Belle that she needs to treat her grandfather with the same type of unconditional love. He believes that ole’ Hock needs a tender hand, a hug every now & then and told he’s doing a great job.

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Ghost Town

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  • Title: Ghost Town
  • IMDB: link

“You died.”
“I died?”
“A little bit.”

Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) doesn’t like people.  The dentist has a disdain for pretty much the entire human race, but his life is changed by an unforeseen side-effect of a routine surgery.

The dentist goes in for a routine colonoscopy, dies for seven minutes on the table, and walks out with an ability to see and hear dead people.  And New York it seems has more than its share of ghosts.

Pincus is hounded by the spirits needing closure led by recently deceased Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear) who wants Pincus to ruin his widow’s relationship with a lawyer.  Pincus immediately falls for Gwen (Tea Leoni) and agrees, but most overcome his own personality and self-history to win her over.

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Frozen River

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  • Title: Frozen River
  • IMDB: link

“I didn’t know any other way to keep us together.”

Melissa Leo stars as Ray, a struggling mother of two (Charlie McDermott, James Reilly) just trying to get by in a small town in upstate New York, just across the border from Quebec.

When her husband takes off for Atlantic City with the final payment for her family’s DoubleWide new home she’s left without options.

A chance encounter with a Native American woman named Lily (Misty Upham) provides Ray a dangerous business opportunity to smuggle illegal immigrants across the Mohawk reservation into the United States.

The film, written and directed by first-timer Courtney Hunt, is a bleak story about love, family, and how far someone will go to persue their dreams.  Leo and Upham carry the film with a pair of strong performances, and when the story movies away from their characters the story suffers.

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Righteous Kill

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  • Title: Righteous Kill
  • IMDB: link

“This thing is a clusterfuck to end all clusterfucks.”

Turk (Robert De Niro) and Rooster (Al Pacino) are two warhorse detectives for the NYPD.  We learn early on that they’re good cops who take the job seriously, but aren’t above taking shortcuts for justice when the courts let them down.

Things get sticky for Turk, who presents the tale from a taped video through a serious of flashbacks, when a recent string of deaths begin to lead back to him.  His Lieutenant (Brian Dennehy) and the cops working the case (John Leguizamo, Donnie Wahlberg) believe they have a cop serial killer on their hands, with Turk being the most likely suspect.

The film centers on De Niro’s character, his job, and his unhealthy relationship with a crime scene investigator (Carla Gugino).  There are also subplots involving the cops trying to take down a local drug dealer (50 Cent) with the help of a lawyer (Trilby Glover), and a woman (Melissa Leo) whose daughter was brutally killed by her boyfriend.

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Burn After Reading

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  • Title: Burn After Reading
  • IMDB: link

“I thought you might be worried about the security, of your shit.”

Burn After Reading, written and directed by the Coen Brothers, is a thriller set in a world not too far from Dumb & Dumber.  It’s a tale of secrets, lies, and murder through an idiot lens.  It’s an interesting idea that struggles at becoming a good film.

The story centers around a recently fired CIA agent (John Malkovich) with a bad temper whose memoirs wind up in the hands of two dumb gym employees (Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt).  After being attacked the first time the pair attempt to return the disk their plans turn towards blackmail or to selling the dubious contents to the Russians.  As to why the film chooses the Russians, well, the joke is obvious though the rationale (like so much in the film) is not.

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