Category: Reviews

There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterpiece didn’t win the Oscar but is one of the best films of the last decade.

We get the idea that Daniel Plainview has been working his entire life to get to the thrilling conclusion of “There Will Be Blood.” And we also get the idea that Daniel Day-Lewis has been searching his entire career for a role such as this. And all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films have prepared him for this masterpiece.

Nothing prepared me for this amazing, harrowing, difficult film about greed and the people consumed by it. The opening shot is of a mountain range in the desert, and the chilling orchestral crescendo to accompany it makes the moment reminiscent of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In a mine shaft behind these mountains is Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis), working all by himself looking for precious stones. It’s 1898, but to get as deep as he is, he must have been working a long time. After an explosion inside the shaft, Daniel falls and breaks his leg, but he manages to pull himself out of the shaft and drag himself miles over the mountains. The first place he goes is to sell his diamonds.

By 1902, he’s beginning his own company, mining deeper in the same spot. In it he finds oil, and the Daniel Plainview we will follow throughout the rest of the film finally comes to light. A coworker with a baby boy is killed as they mine, and Daniel takes the boy, raises him as his own and uses him on his sales pitches. Continue reading “There Will Be Blood”

Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” had its share of sentimental imperfections that for this critic subsequently made it the best movie of 2008. “Black Swan,” a film so wholly different from “The Wrestler’s” gritty documentary realism compared to this film’s psychological phantasms, is Aronofsky’s companion piece to “The Wrestler,” examining the price of performance, pain and perfection.

Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), the demanding instructor and director of a prestigious ballet company in New York, announces forthright that their company will be doing a new take on Tchaikovsky’s classic “Swan Lake” for the opening of the new season. But for those unfamiliar with the story, it may not be initially clear that Aronofsky and the film’s three screenwriters are doing their own adaptation on the ballet, harnessing its dark and morbid undertones beneath the elegant beauty of the dance.

Aronofsky’s opening scene establishes this tone; with Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), the film’s and the new production’s Swan Queen, he stages an enchanting yet ultimately haunting dance of physical talent by Portman, cinematic finesse by cinematographer Matthew Libatique and special effects wizardry.

Watching such a classy performance initially made me wonder how Aronofsky would do directing a musical, but his style is all in the right place for what becomes an almost psychological horror story. Continue reading “Black Swan”

The Wrestler

“The Wrestler” is the story of Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a washed up wrestler from the 80’s. But it is also the story of a stripper with a heart of gold, Mickey Rourke with his amazing comeback to acting, and all of us, focusing on the pain and suffering we endure to be loved and accepted, and it’s absolutely beautiful.

Mickey Rourke plays Randy, and with the pain he’s had to face until now, this story may as well be autobiographical. With that said, Rourke puts his heart and soul into this performance, creating one of the most identifiable characters of the year. Randy is lonely and defeated, and he knows he deserves to be nothing more, but he is so dedicated to the people he loves including his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), Cassidy the stripper (Marisa Tomei) and most importantly his fans as “The Ram.” We can’t help but return his kindness. Continue reading “The Wrestler”

Super 8 Review

J.J. Abrams’s “Super 8” is a thrilling sci-fi that uses Steven Spielberg’s classics as inspiration.

Some kids in a small town in the late ‘70s are making a zombie movie with a Super 8 camera. The director Charlie says his movie needs to have a story, characters we care about and real production value. So he gets his middle school friends to read lines like “I love you too,” to paint themselves in zombie makeup and to blow up model trains with real explosives.

To think there was a time when kids actually knew what a movie needed to make a memorable summer thrill.

J.J. Abrams, the director of the spirited and exciting monster movie mystery and adventure “Super 8,” is still one of the new kids on the block in the movie world. He’s a household name on television, but as somewhat of a director-for-hire on franchise pictures like “Mission: Impossible III” and “Star Trek,” he’s been waiting for an original story like this one to show he looks up to the big boys still making movies, specifically Steven Spielberg.

Continue reading “Super 8 Review”

The Tree of Life

“The Tree of Life” is a purely cinematic experience. Terrence Malick has made a film that speaks life lessons and evokes fundamental human emotions through visuals and style above all else. In doing so, his film worships the gift of life itself.

The purpose of existence, as seen through Malick’s eyes, is to simply love life, and every part of it. Beauty, pain, sadness, joy and all else that encompasses our being are necessary to live and reach the afterlife, which Malick envisions as a place to cherish the life we came from.

Such a view may seem overly optimistic and unpractical to some, if not most, but this is Malick’s film first before anyone else’s, and its message appears utterly sincere to the environmental and natural themes evoked throughout the four other films in his nearly four decade career.

With messages as life fulfilling as these and a film as operatic and grand in scope as this, “The Tree of Life” preaches lessons that one could live by and has aspirations to be one of the greatest films ever made. It’s a bit far from that benchmark, but the intentions are sure and true, and the experience is still wholly enriching. Continue reading “The Tree of Life”

True Grit

The original “True Grit” was released in 1969. It was a classical Hollywood Western when Butch and Sundance and “The Wild Bunch” were redefining the genre. The film was a fun throwback, and there are likely no better directors today than the Coen brothers to attempt to revive that same nostalgia.

To belabor the point about Henry Hathaway’s original film, John Wayne, late in his career, was the perfect casting choice as there was no one more Hollywood than he was. His sheer charisma combined with the film’s camp appeal (and not to mention a G-rating) elevated “True Grit” to that of a real “movie” for all those that always loved taking in their old school magic.

So Joel and Ethan Coen had a test on their hands. How do you capture the charm of one of the biggest movie stars of all time, keep the film fun and in the spirit of all the greats from the ‘30s, ’40s and ‘50s and modernize the film to avoid making a shot for shot remake? Continue reading “True Grit”

Midnight in Paris

If Woody Allen were 40 years younger, I can sense him itching to get in front of the camera again for his latest film “Midnight in Paris.”

This time around, he seems to address his critics’ pleas over the last 20 years for him to simply return to the golden age of film making he had in the ‘70s and ‘80s and responds by quelling his own neuroses of nostalgia by optimistically looking towards the future.

He does so in a film dripping with love for his own nostalgic influences and styles. “Midnight in Paris” is classic Allen from the first title card. The opening shots recall “Manhattan” in every detail but the black and white. It stars Owen Wilson as a spot-on Woody Allen surrogate and Michael Sheen (sporting a convincing American accent) in the Alan Alda or Max von Sydow pompous intellectual role common throughout all of his classics. Continue reading “Midnight in Paris”

X-Men: First Class

The X-Men are a treasure trove of possibilities. Any superpower you wish you had, one of them has it, thus their immense popularity and enduring capability of this franchise. “X-Men: First Class” is the fifth installment, and fans of the films are very familiar with the names, histories and mutations of every one of them to the point that even Charles Darwin would lose track. So I would expect no less from Marvel than to exploit every miniscule detail as a way of reminding us how respectful they are of their fans and their millions of dollars in revenue.

“X-Men: First Class” is a carefully constructed film that takes no chances in contradicting the franchise that has carried it to this point. If there is a character, mutation, plot point, building, vehicle or costume that was not completely explained in the original three films or the Wolverine prequel, it is here. It is Marvel’s way of ensuring there will be at least a sixth installment, and God knows how many more.

The difference is that director Matthew Vaughn (“Kick-Ass”) is given mild liberties to not take these details strictly seriously. For instance, it has long been a question of why in Bryan Singer’s two films we see little of the classic costume designs the way Stan Lee drew them in the original comic book series. Surely Vaughn is forced to answer the reason behind Lee’s kitschy ‘60s style, but he’s allowed to do so by making his film a psychedelic period piece. Set pieces, dialogue and women’s clothing choices are rightfully emblematic of a comic series that began as campy fun, and split screen montages are goofy departures from a film otherwise focused on the dourness in the Holocaust and Cuban Missile Crisis. Continue reading “X-Men: First Class”

Fish Tank

Andrea Arnold’s tough film “Fish Tank” explores the contradictions between a teenager’s ambitions, emotions, relationships, environment, choices and consequences. Rarely has a film captured as truly the entire roller coaster that is growing up as a bitter, confused 15-year-old girl.

Mia, as played by the unprofessional actress Katie Jarvis, is the jaded and violent British girl living in slummy apartments in London, and as the entire film stems from her perspective, Jarvis is uncompromising in her energy and range as she guides herself through her own urges and uncertainties.

She begins the film in an abandoned blue apartment building. She comes to this refuge as a place to practice her secret ambitions to be a dancer, but when inside, she doesn’t forget her unbridled emotion to the rest of the world. She has no friends, constantly fights to free a horse chained in a parking lot and gets in shouting matches with her mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing) and her younger sister Keeley (Sarah Bayes). All three frequent the “C” word when referring to one another. Continue reading “Fish Tank”

Inglourious Basterds

Unlike “Pulp Fiction,” Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” pushes no new boundaries in terms of cinema; so it may just fall in at number two on Tarantino’s best list. But this film is a testament to his lifelong passion with movies.
“Inglourious Basterds” displays directing, acting, writing, cinematography and art direction at its finest, and it is the best movie of 2009.

Tarantino’s episodic tale is not a World War II epic but a story set in 1940’s occupied France. His acute obsession with the intricacies and depth of his characters drives the action, and the result is a verbose yet invigorating endeavor. The film clocks in at two and a half hours, but these dialogue riddled scenes each more intense than the last make the time fly by. And yet, the film only has anywhere between 10 and 15 scenes. Tarantino moves the action along through his conversations, and if violence is a consequence or resolution to the scene, it is because his characters have led it to that point.

So any fanboy attending “Inglourious Basterds” may have to wait for the blood to hit the fan, and they will no doubt be praising the beautifully orchestrated violence Tarantino can conjure, but in their patience they will not be disappointed. Tarantino’s screenplay is the crowning achievement of the film, and it’s well deserving of his Oscar nomination. Continue reading “Inglourious Basterds”