Small, well-meaning family comedies with dramatic heft are hard to do well. The audience has to believe all the family relationships, the specific circumstances that make this family unique, and the struggles they have to overcome. The Kids Are All…
Tag Archive for film review
Film Review: Frozen (2010)
by Robert • 31 January 2011 • 0 Comments
Joe (Shawn Ashmore) and Dan (Kevin Zegers) have been friends since kindergarten. For years, they have gone on weekly ski trips to escape from their real lives. This week, Dan invites his girlfriend Parker (Emma Bell), even though she can’t…
Film Review: Mother (2010)
by Robert • 28 January 2011 • 0 Comments
Mother is a brilliant crime drama that breaks all expectations of the genre. The fact that a senior citizen is doing the investigating is enough to make the film stand out. Kim Hye-Ja plays the titular Mother. Her adult son,…
Film Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2010)
by Robert • 25 January 2011 • 0 Comments
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has become somewhat of a phenomenon. The novel, the first in the Millenium trilogy from late author Stieg Larsson, concerns the exploits of Lisbeth Sanders, an unbalanced computer hacker. After being raped by her…
Film Review: Micmacs (2010)
by Robert • 21 January 2011 • 0 Comments
Micmacs is hard to classify as a film. It’s a comedy about people living in a junkyard waging war against weapons manufacturers, but it’s not a dark comedy. It’s a slapstick comedy, but most of the humor is derived from…
Film Review: Blue Valentine (2010)
by Robert • 18 January 2011 • 0 Comments
Blue Valentine is a difficult film to watch. Not because it uses a non-linear storytelling device, jumping between the present day struggles of a married couple and the early days of their relationship, but because of the content. Shy of…
Film Review: I Am Love (2010)
by Robert • 10 January 2011 • 0 Comments
I Am Love is a curious film. It is a melodrama that uses little dialog. It is a character study that targets three different characters in a family at the same time. It is a beautifully acted film that values…
Film Review: S&Man (2006)
by Robert • 9 January 2011 • 0 Comments
I am a horror fan. I make no apologies for it. I was drawn into the genre at an early age by a whole string of events and haven’t looked back. Yet, there is a subgenre that I never really…
Film Review: True Grit (2010)
by Robert • 3 January 2011 • 0 Comments
Imagine, if you will, that the American Western never went out of style. Every year, since the genre pulled out of the “pulp” categorization of the 1930s, we were hit with classic Westerns the same way we see the release…
Film Review: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
by Robert • 20 December 2010 • 0 Comments
Have you ever seen one of your favorite novels adapted for the screen in such a way that you are blinded to any flaws? The kind of film adaptation where so much is thrown in from the book that you…
Film Review: Black Swan (2010)
by Robert • 13 December 2010 • 2 Comments
The emotional and psychological state of an artist can be a very fragile thing. For a professional, their livelihood depends on opening themselves up for everyone to watch and examine. The work is often thankless and stress runs rampant during…
Film Review: The Social Network (2010)
by Robert • 6 December 2010 • 0 Comments
It’s hard to make a good courtroom film. There’s only so much that can go on in the legal setting that comes across as believable and worth watching. It’s also hard to make a good character study of an unlikable…
Film Review: Otto; or, Up with Dead People (2009)
by Robert Gannon • 9 February 2010 • 0 Comments
Before watching provocateur Bruce LaBruce's latest film Otto; or, Up with Dead People for the first time, I proudly recounted my understanding of what the film was like, "quasi-porn foreign satirical indie semi-horror film." Technically, the description is accurate. There are…