Drama

Blue Jasmine

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Blue Jasmine
  • IMDB: link

Blue JasmineBlue Jasmine reminds me quite a lot of Celebrity, writer/director Woody Allen‘s 1998 trainwreck of a film casting another actor (Kenneth Branagh) in Allen’s trademark role with mixed results. Allen’s latest is noteworthy for the terrific performance of Cate Blanchett as the female version of Allen’s hopelessly paranoid and neurotic character. Blanchett is amazing as Jasmine, but unlike Allen who was able to consistently charm his way through such portrayals, Jasmine’s cynicism cuts like a knife forcing audiences to keep their distance and never embrace the character in the way the film needs to ultimately succeed. Blanchett might be terrific, but the script give us no reason to care about what happens to her.

Despite loosing her fortune and marriage due to her husband’s (Alec Baldwin) shady business dealings and womanizing, it’s impossible to see the self-obsessed Jasmine as anything approaching a legitimate victim. There’s little reason to feel sorry for the oblivious and neurotic Jasmine, nor is there reason to hate or take joy in her fall from grace. All she can earn is our pity.

…

Blue JasmineRead More »

Blue Jasmine Read More »

Isn’t Apple the Most Awesome Thing Ever?!

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Jobs
  • IMDB: link

JobsDirector Joshua Michael Stern‘s (Swing Vote) biopic of Apple founder Steve Jobs isn’t without it’s moments, even if the the screenplay by Matt Whitely brings nothing new to the party or fails to reveal anything previously unknown about Jobs’ life or the the rise of Apple Computers from a garage to a multi-billion dollar brand. Where it begins to get tedious, however, is in its never-ending praise of Jobs’ apparently limitless genius and all things Apple.

The story is relatively simple as Jobs (played surprisingly well by Ashton Kutcher) is the very much the cliched pretentious genius who doesn’t play well with others. From his humble beginnings, we watch as Jobs uses the expertise of Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad), a far more interesting and sympathetic figure than Jobs in almost every respect who doesn’t earn nearly enough screentime, along with the help of Bill Fernandez (Victor Rasuk), Rod Holt (Ron Eldard), and financier Mike Markkula (Dermot Mulroney) to launch the beginnings of what would grow to become a vast computer empire.

…

Isn’t Apple the Most Awesome Thing Ever?!Read More »

Isn’t Apple the Most Awesome Thing Ever?! Read More »

The Bling Ring

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Bling Ring
  • IMDb: link

The Bling RingBased on real events in late 2008 and through most of 2009, writer/director Sofia Coppola‘s latest film takes a look at a group of teenagers from Calabasas, California who burglarized several Hollywood celebrities with the help of tabloid and gossip blogs (which told the gang when the celebrities would be out of town) and the stars themselves (as many left their homes defenseless, not even bothering to lock doors and windows). The group would come to be known as the Hollywood Hills Burglars or The Bling Ring.

Although the film spends time with all the members of the group, the primary focus is on Rebecca (Katie Chang), the instigator of the robberies, and her best friend Marc (Israel Broussard), a shy gay teen willing to do nearly anything for his first real best friend. The group also includes Chloe (Claire Julien), a friend with the criminal connections to help the Bling Ring fence some of their stolen merchandise, and the homeschooled threesome of Nicki (Emma Watson), her younger sister Emily (Georgia Rock), and her adopted sister Sam (Taissa Farmiga).

…

The Bling RingRead More »

The Bling Ring Read More »

Before Midnight

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Before Midnight
  • IMDB: link

Before MidnightIn 1995 Richard Linklater and stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy collaborated on a small independent film which centered around a burgeoning romance between an American man and French woman on the final day of his European vacation before flying home the next morning. Set against the backdrop of Vienna, Before Sunrise is the kind of movie romance, centered on two people meeting and falling love and honestly discussing their feelings, beliefs, and desires, that Hollywood has long since given up trying to make in favor of the type of contrived romantic comedies Katherine Heigl and Kate Hudson are known for. It’s also the beginning of one of the least probable movie franchises ever conceived.

Nine years after making the original film, which ended with Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy) parting ways with plans to reconnect in the near future, Linklater reconnected with his two stars and put out a sequel set in real time as the two star-crossed lovers reconnected for an afternoon on the streets of Paris in Before Sunset before Jesse was scheduled to fly back home that night.

…

Before MidnightRead More »

Before Midnight Read More »

The Dull Gatsby

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Great Gatsby
  • IMDB: link

The Great GatsbyIt took five years after the disaster which was Australia for writer/director Baz Luhrmann to be allowed to make a feature film again. Sadly, it was this film. I kid, but the sad truth is Australia was an amazingly bad trainwreck that deserved every bit of scorn it earned from critics and audiences alike. Even sadder is the fact that Australia might actually be a better film than the writer/director’s current adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel which takes literary classic and grinds it down into dime store romance novel full of the director’s trademark spectacle, garish production design, and style (complete with inappropriate time-period music), resulting in dreadful boring film.

The Great Gatsby isn’t horrifically bad. It’s not the kind of truly wretched film that would rise my ire and pitchfork for a march on the director’s metaphorical castle. Almost as troubling, Luhrmann’s version of The Great Gatsby is an emotionally stunted and empty experience that often tells us, but never shows us, why we should care for these characters or the tragic events in which they find themselves trapped.

…

The Dull GatsbyRead More »

The Dull Gatsby Read More »