Friday, August 31, 2012
Film has its roots in Virginia.
Coming to the big screen this week is the story of three brothers who made and ran moonshine in Franklin County, VA, based on a book by local novelist Matt Bondurant with a screenplay written by Nick Cave. This indie release, directed by Aussie John Hillcoat, brings together a stellar cast in what ultimately is a beautifully filmed ultra-violent action drama but a missed opportunity to go deeper. What we get is a temporarily diverting two hours, but a film that doesn't really stay with you or scream "classic'" after the credits roll. One thing does stay with you long after the twitch-inducing violence recedes from your memory: the acting. Tom Hardy as the laconic and mythically indestructible head of the family is compulsively magnetic to …
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Delightfully Not for the Norms
This movie is not for the normal, usual, run-of-the mill cartoon movie fan. No. If your kids who are less fans of Mickey Mouse and more fans of Jack from Nightmare Before Christmas, or your tweens prefer Dr. Who to the Whos in Whoville, or if your family decorates more for Halloween than for Christmas, this is your kind of movie. If this sounds like you, you will be able to relate to and feel sympathy for the hero of ParaNorman. He is not like everyone else. He has trouble fitting in. So many of us horror movie lovers, and fans of zombie, vampire and slasher movies, can relate. Until lately, those kinds of interests just weren't cool. But Norman has another thing against him. He sees dead people. Toward the beginning of the story, this…
Friday, August 10, 2012
Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones elevate what should be called ‘Mope Springs’: Marriage Melancholia
In a world where teenagers are the stars and films are green-lit based on the number of explosions, it behooves us adults to put our cinematic money where our mouths are and support films with actors who stand for the older members of the audience, especially when these actors represent the very height of thespian prowess. Hope Springs is about a couple, played by Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones, who have been married for 31 years. They venture (at the behest of Streep's character) to Maine to attend a week of intensive marriage counseling to try to bring back the intimacy missing in their relationship. Make no mistake. This is a movie that has the single worst marketing campaign of the year to date. Hope Springs is less Woody Allen …
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Not a good weekend for new films.
Not much is happening in new movies this weekend. Recently, however, all too much happened in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. More about that after my reviews of this weekend's offerings... Step Up Revolution The Watch and Step Up Revolution are the releases, and both have had or should have troubles relating to national headlines. Political correctness is often taken way too far in this country. People seem to waste time better spent with their families or cleaning belly button lint being righteously offended. That being said, let's begin this week talking dance…there's a sequence in the hyperbolically named Step Up Revolution (revolution? if Che Guevara is in it, I must have missed him) that has rightly gotten negative press for a …
Friday, July 6, 2012
The Amazing Spider-Man is absolutely great. It's fun, surprisingly heartfelt and believable.
Friday, June 1, 2012
This goth version of Snow White is beautiful but lacking. See Moonrise Kingdom instead.
Such promise. After Tarsem Singh's Mirror Mirror chose form over substance, we were hoping the dark take Snow White and the Huntsman offered on the age-old tale would be all it seduced us with in the previews. Oscar winning stunner Charlize Theron as the wicked queen, Chris Hemsworth, the haughty hottie we love as Thor as the Huntsman, and Kristen Stewart bringing her mixed demeanor of demure ingénue and smoldering git-er-done, goth girl all presented in a nightmarish landscape… what's not to love? Lots. No question it out-designs Mirror Mirror, which is no small feat. The actors embrace their roles and are well up to their tasks, although handicapped with a flaccid script with many shortcomings, the most frustrating of which are the …
Friday, May 25, 2012
Patch's Cinema Siren reviews the new Will Smith flick, Men in Black 3, calling it escapist fun with a surprise ending that's well worth the trip.
If you're like me, you may have pondered, "Why, 10 years after an MIB sequel that stunk up the theatre like Edgar the Bug's rotting human skin, are they releasing another sequel? How can it possibly be worth seeing?" Well, you ask, is it? Oh yeah! Definitely the best of the franchise, MIB3 is a lot of escapist fun and breathes life into the adventures of these boys in dark suits. It succeeds most by using every detail of both the scripting and visual elements in the service of the story. This installment has neither the jokey too-cool-for-school vibe of the first or the too-serious-to-enjoy mess of the second. What we have in MIB3 is an exciting action adventure with an oogie alien arch-villain, great sometimes funny, sometimes sweet hero-…
Friday, May 18, 2012
Cinema Siren reviewed Battleship and says while it's not the next The Piano, it's most definitely ridiculous fun.
Battleship feels like a two-hour Navy recruitment video. I'm surprised blue and gold aren't the colors used on the movie poster, along with “GO NAVY!” and “BEAT ALIENS!” If you leave your brain at the front door of the multiplex on a day you feel like rooting for the home team, you could do worse than vacillating between cheering and snickering for those two hours of this completely ridiculous, raucous mash up of Independence Day, Pearl Harbor and Transformers. Director Peter Berg, of Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom, and Hancock, knows his way around the camera. So we can try to accept the fact that for some reason he feels the need to release his inner Michael Bay. What results is not exactly a good movie, but one that unapologetically …
Friday, May 11, 2012
Patch's Cinema Siren reviews the new Burton-Depp flick, Dark Shadows.
Tim Burton, as the stylized director of such glorious oddities as Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, and Ed Wood, is the pied piper to the inner goth in all of us. So it is with a heavy heart Cinema Siren has to report Dark Shadows, while it might have moments of loopy greatness and top-notch production and costume design, it is on the whole the most tragic of cinematic sins, a bore. The greatness is in some particularly exciting and fast paced scenes, that are strangely intermittent in its 116 minutes, and so at odds with the soap opera ploddings of the rest of the film. The first minutes of Dark Shadows show great promise. Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp, in his 8th partnership with director Burton) is the rakish son of a 1770s New World …
Friday, May 4, 2012
Our Cinema Siren takes a look at the first of the summer blockbusters, The Avengers.
The first big entry in the blockbuster sweepstakes this summer is setting a very high bar indeed. For lovers of comic book heroes, watching this Marvel team of a lifetime suit up, bicker, beat each other up and save the world is akin to geek nirvana. It is the very definition of BIGGER, BETTER, MORE! It is an explosion of egos, to be sure. They're like the dysfunctional family of superheroes, with one black sheep causing most of the trouble. Thor and Iron Man. Cap and Iron Man. Thor, Cap and Iron Man. How do they have the time and energy to fight anyone else when they keep beating each other to a pulp? It's as fun to see if they'll get along long enough to formulate a plan or find a way to work together as it is to watch the many and …
Rachel Hatzipanagos
6:35 pm on Monday, July 30, 2012
Yeah, it's definitely worth shelling out the extra for the IMAX if you are watching a movie like Dark Knight which most people would like/love. Ah, when will they ever release Inception again so I can see it in IMAX :D more ›