Drama

Eastwood and Adams have plenty of Trouble with the Curve

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Trouble with the Curve
  • IMDB: link

trouble-with-the-curve-posterTrouble with the Curve, a tale of an old baseball scout (Clint Eastwood) reconnecting with his estranged daughter (Amy Adams) on his final recruiting trip, is exactly what you’d expect. In fact, less than halfway through the film I correctly predicted how every single storyline would end.

The by-the-book tale is an odd mashup cashing in on the success of Moneyball and Grand Torino (with a romantic comedy thrown in for good measure). Sadly, but not surprisingly, Trouble with the Curve is nothing more than blatant Oscar bait and forgettable feelgood pre-holiday fodder.

Clichéd and as subtle as a kick to the groin, the screenplay by first-time screenwriter Randy Brown doesn’t so much foreshadow events as scream loudly from Hollywood playbook exactly what will occur. Overly sentimental, and not ambitious in the least, the film is a crowd pleaser with well-placed grumpy old man jokes that won’t force audiences to think much (or at all).

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We Need to Talk About Kevin

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: We Need to Talk About Kevin
  • IMDb: link

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What if your child was responsible for a horrific event that changed not just the lives of your family but scarred entire community? Guilt-ridden and unable to leave and try to start a new life elsewhere, how would you go about your daily life knowing that any sense of normalcy was impossible?

Based on the novel by Lionel Shiver, We Need to Talk About Kevin, brought to the screen by writer/director Lynne Ramsay, focuses on the life of Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton) following the events of a school massacre caused by her teenage son Kevin (Ezra Miller). We watch as Eva becomes trapped in a series of events that unfold slowly destroying any chance she once had at happiness.

It’s an intriguing take that doesn’t examine the perpetrator of the crime or the specific series of events that led to the massacre, but instead gives us the perspective of the young man’s mother, who despite her love for Kevin, has known there’s something deeply wrong with her son for years.

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A Separation

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: A Separation
  • IMDb: link

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Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film, A Separation is a study in a family’s struggles after the husband and wife separate over differences surrounding the future of their daughter. Simin (Leila Hatami) wants to move the family to America and give her daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) opportunities she will not find in Iran, but her husband Nader (Peyman Moadi) will not consent to a divorce and refuses to abandon his invalid father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi) for the promise of a better life in a country that is not his own.

When his wife moves out Nader has no other choice but to hire someone to look after his father while he is at work. Nader agrees to give the work to a husband (Shahab Hosseini) of a friend of Simin’s, but when he’s unable to take the job due to legal troubles it falls to his wife Razieh (Sareh Bayat) to take care of elderly man suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia, which proves to be a much harder task then she initially envisioned.

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Act of Valor

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Act of Valor
  • IMDB: link

act-of-valor-posterActing, it turns out, is harder than it looks. The experiment from co-directors Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh to cast real Navy SEALs instead of actors for the lead roles in Act of Valor produces mixed results and probably shouldn’t be repeated any time soon.

Act of Valor isn’t an awful film but it feels oddly put together. At times it films like a documentary, a pseudo-documentary, an action flick, and a hamfisted USA Armed Forces recruitment film. Despite giving us a group of impressive action sequences these pieces don’t fit together well.

It’s hard to blame the SEALs, who were chosen to showcase what the real soldiers can do in combat situations, when they are given such uneven writing to work with. It’s true, that with the possible exception of the oldest member of the team, the group certainly aren’t natural actors, but Kurt Johnstad‘s script doesn’t do them any favors with its share of awkward dialogue.

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A Dangerous Method

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: A Dangerous Method
  • IMDB: link

a-dangerous-method-posterA slow moving drama centered around the science of psychology may initially seem an odd choice for director David Cronenberg‘s latest project, but A Dangerous Method proves to be an engaging study of the minds and hearts of three individuals, each of whom finds themselves at the mercy of their uncontrollable passions and foibles.

Based on the play by Christopher Hampton and the book by John Kerr, Cronenberg and screenwriter Christopher Hampton deliver a character study centered around three people central to the birth of psychoanalysis. Michael Fassbender stars as Carl Jung, a doctor who in the early 20th Century would expand on the ideas of Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) to create analytical psychology.

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