They Shot the Piano Player (2024)
Spanish director Fernando Truaba is one of those [...]
Archive for May, 2011
The Birds (1963)
If you follow the chronology of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, you can see that he did his best work in the 40s and 50s after he came to America. That’s an argument that you could probably debate for weeks, but I have a feeling that it would end up owing the general consensus. Just look at […]
Me and Orson Welles (2008)
If you run down the list of achievements and dubious exercises in the 70 years that Orson Welles occupied this life, you will see a life that bolsters more interesting twists and turns then any ten people that you can probably name. He did everything: he was a film director, a theater director, a radio […]
Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)
Kung Fu Panda 2 is a joyful, glorious animated adventure, fast moving, quick-witted, and a lot more fun then I had expected. The animation is crisp and beautiful – more-so in lovely 2D – and clearly shows the advances of the art form. Here is a movie that isn’t simply a clone stamp of the […]
The Hangover Part II (2011)
The general critical consensus leading up to the release of The Hangover Part II is nearly identical to the mass reaction that met Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. That being, it’s the exact same movie only in a different location. Critics decry that the filmmakers had no idea how to twist or turn […]
Life, Above All (2010)
Oliver Schmitz’s Life, Above All is a very touching human drama. It is deeply affective, sad without being maudlin, heartbreaking without feeling phony, and hopeful for all the right reasons. It is a film from South Africa, about Africans, speaking Sotho (a bantu language spoken in South Africa) rather than simply having all the actors […]
A Small Act (2010)
“It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem to be absurd and impractical. Yet, I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart.” – Anne Frank Anne Frank wrote those words while locked in an attic with her family, hiding from the […]
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)
In movies, as in marriage, the fourth go-around can get a little tricky. As the fourth round approaches there’s an apprehension of what has come before and what is new that is left to be discovered. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the third sequel in Disney’s highly-successful series, is not a movie that […]
Leaves of Grass (2009)
When I finished watching a screening of Tim Blake Nelson’s Leaves of Grass at Ebertfest this year, I wasn’t immediately sure what to think about it. Here is a movie that contains philosophy, family ties, Walt Whitman, marijuana, drug deals, twin brothers and the Jewish community of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is at once a comedy, […]
