FUNNY GAMES
January 12, 2013 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
January 5, 2013 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
IN COLD BLOOD
January 4, 2013 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
November 24, 2012 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
BOYS DON'T CRY
July 17, 2012 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
NASHVILLE
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July 17, 2012 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Gone Baby Gone
For his directing debut Ben Affleck, and co-writer Aaron Stockard, adapt a Dennis Lehane ("Mystic River") novel that resists being converted into the usual three-act structure like a circle being jammed into a square. Casey Affleck does leading man honors as Boston native Patrick Kenzie, a youngish private detective sharing his home-office business with love interest Angie (Michelle Monaghan). Relatives of a missing four-year-old neighborhood girl induce Patrick and Angie to take up the case in hopes of recovering her. The girl's mom is a negligent drug addict. Assigned to work with career cops (played by Ed Harris and John Ashton), our private-eye duo find their personal relationship threatened as they descend into a world of brutal drug dealers and lying cops. Strong performances from its ensemble cast can't compensate for undeveloped character-reversals, splashes of exploitation, and a broken storyline that feels like two different narratives pasted together. Special features include commentary by Ben Affleck and screenwriter Aaron Stockard, two making-of featurettes, and a selection of deleted scenes. Aspect ratio 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound quality processed in Dolby Digital 5.1. (Movie – Two Stars, DVD features – Three Stars) Rated R, 115 mins. (Miramax)
February 17, 2008 in Drama | Permalink
Martian Child
Another installment in a current spate of magical realist films, "Martian Child" focuses on the primal fear of abandonment of a young orphaned boy named Dennis (Bobby Coleman) who professes to be from Mars. John Cusack plays David Gordon, a widowed science fiction writer who sees himself in Dennis, and adopts the troubled boy. With help from his sister Liz (Joan Cusack) and would-be girlfriend Harlee (Amanda Peet), David breaks through Dennis's defense mechanisms and teaches him to see life on terms he can relate to-like baseball. John Cusack's favored co-actors (Oliver Platt, Joan Cusack, and Angelica Huston) add color to a sweet movie that intermittently gets bogged down by poor pacing. Special features include English and Spanish subtitles, a commentary track with produceres Corey Sienega and David Kirschner, and screenwriters Seth Bass and Jonathan Tolins, two making-of featurettes and fourteen deleted and additional scenes. Aspect ratio is 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound quality processed in choice of Dolby Digital Surround or 2.0 Stereo Surround. (Movie – Three Stars, DVD features – Two Stars). Rated PG, 108 mins. (New Line)
February 16, 2008 in Drama | Permalink
Michael Clayton
Screenwriter Tony Gilroy ("The Devil’s Advocate" and "The Bourne Supremacy") makes his directorial debut with the assistance of pedigreed producers and executive producers that include Sydney Pollack, George Clooney, Steven Soderbergh and Anthony Minghella. The list of Academy Award-nominated names sets a cultivated tone for a scathing corporate thriller that emanates from the same narrative petri dish that spawned films like "The Parallax View" and "The China Syndrome." The point of view in "Michael Clayton" is appropriately more alienated than that of those dated films, but is nonetheless rooted in the reality of a corporation’s tendency to chew up and spit out humanity in the name of quarterly profit gains. Special features include English, Spanish, and French subtitles, a commentary track from director Tony Gilroy and film editor John Gilroy, and three additional scenes. (Movie – Four Stars, DVD features – One Star) Rated R, 119 mins. (Warner Brothers)
February 16, 2008 in Drama | Permalink
A Mighty Heart
The "mighty heart" of the film’s title refers more to the long suffering wife of the deceased Wall Street Journalist reporter Daniel Pearl than it does to the man himself. We know this because the climax of the piece arrives when the protagonist, a pregnant Mariane Pearl, goes into an extended primal scream session after hearing news of her husband’s long foreshadowed death. Never more has the Shakespeare quote from Hamlet, "the lady doth protest too much" applied so obviously to a crisis decision in a movie. Daniel Pearl and his wife were acutely aware of the dangers of his job. He was in Karachi trying to get interviews with known terrorists. That Mariane Pearl chose to improperly apply for the 9/11 victim’s relief fund, even though her husband did not perish in that event, informs her unflinching sense of opportunism that carried over to writing a book and participating in making a film about her husband’s death. Somehow, all of this obvious motivation escaped director Michael Winterbottom, the film’s producer Brad Pitt and his wife Angelina Jolie, because they bought into Mariane Pearl’s money grab pity party hook, line and sinker. Never mind that the linear story isn’t capable of maintaining a three-act structure merely because actress, star and supermom Angelina Jolie plays the rather homely-looking Mariane Pearl with every curly hair flawlessly in place. If only Warren Zevon’s "Werewolves of London" played on the soundtrack, then we’d know for certain that her "hair was perfect." Special features include English, French, and Spanish audio and subtitles and a making-of featurette and a promo short. Aspect ratio is 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound processed in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround. (Movie – One Star, DVD features – One Star) Rated R, 103 mins. 
"A Mighty Heart," like the other post-9/11 Hollywood movies ("United 93" and "World Trade Center"), is a would-be documentary subject inflated with promotion in its incarnation as a narrative feature. The turgid emphasis on sentiment and emotion is intended to overpower the viewer into believing and agreeing with everything on the screen, lest he or she be thought of as callous or insensitive. All of the oh-so-sincere earnestness seems to say, you are either with us or you are a bad person. "Hokey" is a word that springs to the lips when I think of these films, but not hokey in a cool Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca" way. No, these movies are meant to be perceived as "important" and "serious" because they ostensibly reveal "heroes" that we the audience should aspire to, but could never be, since we were not in the enviable position of the suffering person onscreen.