The latest Nicholas Sparks novel to be filmed is Safe Haven. It’s another romance surrounded by elements that threaten an otherwise obvious love affair. I must admit that I’m a huge fan of The Notebook which has gotten me no shortage of curious looks from various friends but I still contend it’s a great love […]
I wish that I had a winning formula for anything — perhaps video game design or writing — that would produce money at a regular rate with different versions of that same formula. Nicholas Sparks seems to have a knack for writing romantic dramas that get turned into movies starring pretty actors kissing in the rain. Some […]
World War II seems to be an endless supply of perspectives and stories that surface in books, movies and various other forms of historical records. The best of these introduce something unexpected and perhaps unsettling to the way you look at a group, location or ideology. Lore uses all of the familiar tropes of fairy […]
A teenage girl in Nazi Germany is left to look after her younger siblings in the closing months of World War II in Lore. There are few subject matters that have been the focus of more films than the Holocaust. Countless films have covered the period from virtually every conceivable perspective to the point of […]
I really despise movie trailers that present one type of movie when the actual movie is something completely different. Even worse, comedies tend to show you the best jokes in the trailer so that, when you see those parts in the actual movie, they’re no longer funny. This trick is typical of the spoof series like […]
You may have been in a doctor’s office and seen well-dressed men and women with large briefcases or bags and prominent name tags. No, they’re not Mormons. These are drug reps for major pharmaceutical companies. They bring gifts (drug samples or pens) and have pizza delivered to the doctors and their staff in order to […]
The first comedy of the new year is Identity Thief starring Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy. Bateman plays Sandy Bigelow Patterson, an every day kind of family guy from Denver who suddenly finds his world turned upside-down when “Diane” (McCarthy) steals his identity and starts exhausting his accounts and his sanity. It’s a recipe for a […]
Side Effects is the latest (and possibly final) film from director Steven Soderbergh. This effort brought me through a potpourri of feelings. I found it curious, compelling, dull, thought-provoking, thrilling, tense, sexual, smart and satisfying—in that order. This is not a film for anyone who has major issues with prescribed drugs as it starts off very […]
A retirement home for the musically gifted is the setting for a nearly-overlooked film that marks the directorial debut of Dustin Hoffman (at a spry 75) in Quartet. The namesake group is played by Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins. The home is populated by some of the biggest names in musical […]
Another week brings another Best Film Oscar nominee into focus with Zero Dark Thirty, the retelling of the hunt and killing of Osama bin Laden. The film stars Jessica Chastain as “Maya” who, may or may not have existed. My guess would be that she stands in as an amalgam of several key players of […]
Oscar-nominated director David O’Russell gives us a romantic comedy starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, Jacki Weaver and more. Each of the four stars have also been nominated in their respective categories and the movie’s been nominated for best picture. This is, without question, a quirky film that happens to have been shot locally […]
One of the last films of the year for me, Amour, is a highly-regarded foreign film that’s gaining a lot of attention of late due to it receiving several major Oscar nominations for Best Film, Foreign Film, Director and Actress. This French story focuses on a cultured married couple in their 80’s. They live a […]