Review - Nobel Son
NOBEL SON [R]
review by Kilian Melloy
In some ways, Nobel Son is the perfect movie to release a week after Thanksgiving: like every other turkey in America, this one has the bare bones of its plot layered over with grayish narrative meat that has a smell of spoilage about it.
From the first scene, in which a man stopping by an ATM is attacked by a knife-wielding assailant who carves off a thumb, it’s clear that this movie has an interest in seeing what it can do with sharp blades and bloodshed.
But this isn’t another pale imitation of the “Saw” franchise; “Nobel Son” hasn’t got the discipline to stick to any one genre. Nor does it have the brilliance to transcend genre and incorporate elements of drama and comedy into its all-enveloping obsessions with craziness, amputation and cannibalism.
What we’re left with is a stew of odds and ends. A brilliant chemistry professor [...]
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - Four Christmases
FOUR CHRISTMASES [PG-13]
review by Padraic Maroney
Going home for the holidays can be a hard for some people. Between dealing with the onslaught of various family members, the old traumas of years past being rehashed and of course, the pressure or picking out the perfect gifts for each and every one of them. Visiting one family is more than enough to send some people running for the hills, but for Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn in the new comedy Four Christmases they must pack four yuletide celebrations into one very long day.
Witherspoon and Vaughn play Kate and Brad, a couple who love their families but have also kept each other sheltered from meeting any of their relatives. To get around this at the holidays, the couple always fib about doing volunteer work in a foreign land while really just going to a all-inclusive resort on an exotic island. This year, thanks [...]
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - The Boy In The Striped Pajamas
THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS [PG-13]
review by Laura Clifford
When his soldier father (David Thewlis of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”) receives a promotion, young Bruno (Asa Butterfield of “Son of Rambow”) is unhappy about leaving his friends and splendid home in Berlin. Bored out in the country, Bruno disobeys his mother (Vera Farmiga of “The Departed”) and goes exploring behind the house, heading toward the strange farm he’s seen from his bedroom window before it was nailed shut. His dreams are answered when he reaches a barbed wire fence and makes friends beyond it with The Boy In The Striped Pajamas.
Director Mark Herman (”Little Voice”) had a peculiar balance to strike in adapting John Boyne’s children’s novel telling a fictional story of the Holocaust, but he has achieved it. By maintaining the perspective on a naive German [...]
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - Australia
AUSTRALIA [PG-13]
review by David Foucher
What happened to Baz Luhrmann? He has not given us a film since 2001’s startlingly effective “Moulin Rouge,” an instant classic that told a period story of forbidden love via modern music. And his prior films - “Romeo and Juliet” and “Strictly Ballroom” - were equally inventive in their fanciful use of cinema for purposes of entertainment. And so, as I stepped into a darkened theatre to watch Australia, I was anticipating another whimsical, emotional, creative outburst from this visionary director. Instead, Luhrmann has delivered an overlong, pedestrian epic - elegant, simple, haunting and grounded.
Any Hollywood director might have conceived this overwrought approach and cobbled together this moderately successful flick, pulling overtly at heartstrings in an over-obvious effort to educate audiences about the abusive missionary policies of Australia circa World War II. As a stereotypical saga, it’s reasonably entertaining. Coming from Luhrmann, it’s a huge [...]
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - Twilight
TWILIGHT [PG-13]
review by David Foucher
I have never read the book “Twilight” - and since I’m also not a teenage girl (despite occasionally tittering like one) - I’m hardly in what you’d term the “target audience” for the celluloid version of this girl-meets-vampire romance. That’s OK; I like movies with fangs. And despite the fact that I was one of approximately five guys in the audience at the screening of Catherine Hardwicke’s adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s popular novel, I felt ready to explore my bloodlust through the fluttering eyelashes of a pubescent femme.
Unfortunately, the movie is too tightly targeted to its audience; it left me cold, bloodless, and convinced I’d just seen a dark, elongated version of “90210.” It’s got a terrific half-hour built into its third act, but the rest of the movie lacks… well, for lack of a better word, fangs.
The story would seem to revolve around the character [...]
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - Bolt
BOLT [G]
review by David Foucher
With the CGI treat Bolt, Disney is suddenly giving Pixar a run for its money. That sounds strange, given that they’re part of the same larger team with regard to film distribution. But up to this point, no animation studio has come close to the heady blend of superior digital animation, quirky humor and pure excellence in storytelling that Pixar exemplifies.
A digital hamster is about to change all that.
Bolt (John Travolta) is a dog (not a hamster) whose life is filled with danger, intrigue and unequalled dedication to his human Penny (Miley Cyrus). That’s because he’s the unwitting action star of a popular television show, and has no idea that the world in which he has been given superpowers is fabricated for the viewers. But when the network insists for the first time on a cliffhanger between episodes (forcing a separation between Bolt and Penny until [...]
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - A Secret
A SECRET [R]
Review by Louise Keller
On his fifteenth birthday a family friend tells Francois (Quentin Dubuis) a shattering truth - tying his family’s past to the Holocaust - that may enable him to develop his own sense of self. Until then, the secret had lain silent, known only to a few, including his mother Tania (Cecile De France), his father Maxime (Patrick Bruel) and lifelong family friend Louise (Julie Depardieu).
There’s nothing simplistic about the secret at the center of this deeply moving drama. Director Claude Miller has adapted Philippe Grimbert’s biographical novel with art, grace and compassion. The film’s six jumps in time do not confuse, but enhance the growing tension, acting as a metronome for our emotions. Stylistically, too, the use of black and white in a film otherwise shot in colour, makes a sharp impression. This is a potent story about persecution; a story about standing up for [...]
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - Quantum Of Solace
QUANTUM OF SOLACE [PG-13]
review by David Foucher
There’s a lot stacked against Quantum Of Solace. It’s a sequel; they rarely live up to their predecessors. And in this case, it’s doubly difficult: “Casino Royale” was a smashing good flick. It’s a revenge story, which is a bad fit for the legendary superspy: we’re used to a James Bond that sips martinis in one hand, shoots bad guys with precision marksmanship from a gun in the other, all the while macking it with a buxom but ultimately dispensable heroine named something like “Olivia Lips.”
Daniel Craig and the writing team of “Royale” put us all on notice that a new Bond was in the making; and in “Solace” they deliver on that promise. In the end, they made a terrific film with the help of helmer Marc Forster… just not in any of the ways you’d expect.
This is the first-ever true Bond [...]
Original post by Robert Newton