Nicholas Sparks makes teenage girls cry for a living: Look no further than the films inspired by his books, ‘The Notebook’ and ‘Walk to Remember’ for shameless tearjerkers. The latest film based on one of his novels, ‘Dear John’, pulls some fairly decent performances out of its young lead actors. That said, its a dull, [...]
To avoid a big, long, pretentious speech about what the year 2009 meant for film, here’s my favorites of the year.
First up, several honorable mentions. “Adventureland”, “Anvil! The Story of Anvil”, “Brothers”, “Bruno”, “500 Days of Summer”, “Food, Inc.”, “The Hangover”, “Julie and Julia“, “The Messenger”, “Moon”, “Paranormal Activity”, the directors cut of “Watchmen”, “Zombieland”, [...]
Hollywood has had a slight obsession with the apocalypse in recent months, with ‘Zombieland’, ‘2012′, ‘Knowing’, and ‘The Road’. Denzel Washington stars in the thriller ‘The Book of Eli’. In it, he portrays Eli, a man who walks across a post-apocalyptic America with only cannibals, thieves, and beggars left. He carries the last surviving copy [...]
Before ‘Leap Year’, Amy Adams had never been in a bad film. Sure, the parts ‘Julie and Julia’ starring her sucked, but the half with Meryl Streep was exceptional enough to lift it up. Sure ‘Underdog’ was an epic fest of crap, but she technically only voiced a character, and didn’t fully appear in it. [...]
Director Peter Jackson has, in the past several years, basically conquered Hollywood. He’s made some of the highest-grossing films of all time, including an 11-hour fantasy epic. His last 4 films have won a combined total of 20 Academy Awards and over $3 billion. Yet somehow, Peter cannot direct a cohesive story on a [...]
Hey. Soon this site will be flooded with lists of mine, including my picks for best of ‘09, worst of ‘09, the worst of the decade, and ultimately the best. But first, I’ll put out the films I want to see most this year.
10: The Social Network. One of my favorite directors, David Fincher (Fight [...]
Jason Reitman’s new film, ‘Up in the Air’, is hard to categorize. Romantic, intelligent, hilarious, heartbreaking. I think that it’s above all, relevant. The film stars George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a man who travels the country frequently, firing people whose bosses don’t have the guts to say it to their face. He also is [...]
‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ has such personality, such boldness, such heart, that it’s somewhat impossible not to love it. Directed by Wes Anderson, who’s done ‘Rushmore’ and ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’, ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ was made with stop-motion, a pain-staking process of making a clay environment and moving it slightly for each frame of film.
Based on [...]
‘Invictus’ is the newest film from director Clint Eastwood. In the past 6 years Eastwood has given us not only his finest performances as an actor (Gran Torino, Million Dollar Baby) but also directed some of the decades’ best films (Letters From Iwo Jima, Mystic River). ‘Invictus’ is somewhat unique in that it has a [...]
‘Avatar’ is, according to some reports, the most expensive film ever made. Records say the film cost $350 million, and every penny shows on screen. This may be the first film that creates a fictional, but living, breathing, new world that you entirely believe in. Not one moment of the film looks fake.
This is [...]