THE TREE OF LIFE is a visually stunning Christian allegory that seeks to answer the ultimate question: "What is the meaning of life?" Terrence Malick has a history with heaven; he wrote and directed the exquisite 1978 DAYS OF HEAVEN. The images from that film have never left me and neither will THE TREE OF [...]
I've always hated circuses. Wouldn't cover them on TV for 25 years. It's not just the confined and lonely animals, it's whatever darkness and sadness is under all that makeup... BUT I really enjoyed WATER FOR ELEPHANTS--maybe because it didn't hide the darkness, and somehow still captured the magic that circuses promise: exotic beauty and [...]
Gwyneth can sing. This performance with Vince Gill earned her a standing "O" at the recent Country Music Awards. Remember that single Paltrow once recorded with Huey Lewis in 2000 from the movie DUETS? Well the woman's got an appealing voice and is mighty convincing in her latest vocal foray: COUNTRY STRONG about a country [...]
There are a slew of movies that are now playing at a theater near you-- both on and off the beaten path. Let's start with the beaten path: --TRUE GRIT is the Coen Brothers tepid take on the John Wayne classic about the gunslinger and the girl who hires him. All of the Coen brothers [...]
THE FIGHTER packs more of a wallop than THE TOWN or CONVICTION. It's yet another gritty true-tale of life in the big/little city of Boston. Lowell Mass, actually. Mark Wahlberg stars as boxer Micky Ward who floats to the top of the welterweight heap, but not before fighting off his family: his mother/manager Alice-- Melissa [...]
The queen's English has nothing on THE KING'S SPEECH. This is quite simply the best film of the year, and I think this true story has gotten short shrift, despite its 7 Golden Globe nominations, which it deserves. Colin Firth stars as the Duke of York("Bertie" to his family)and younger brother of King Edward VIII [...]
There's black Friday. The Black Death. Blackbeard. Now... BLACK SWAN!!! "I'm molting!I'm molting!!!!" Part psychological thriller, part horror flick, part claptrap, it looks gorgeous, and dives right in--ballerinas on the edge competing for the big part, the prima dual role in SWAN LAKE. Natalie Portman wasted away to nothing, and dug out all her old [...]
I couldn't wait to see MORNING GLORY which promised a charming cast in a sweetly comic plot-- or so I thought. There's Rachel McAdams as the sprightly young morning TV show producer chock full of earnestness who has been hired to breathe life into a dead dog of a morning newscast. The warring anchors are [...]
I have not dropped off the face of the earth. I have been so swamped--just closed down mom's house in Connecticut and moved her up here. But have managed to see a bunch of things in recent days, and can share them briefly. MOVIES: THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST the third film adaptation [...]
Clint Eastwood, that long, lean, laconic cowboy of yesteryear, is thinking about death. In HEREAFTER he has crafted a movie that gently explores the subject of what lies beyond with soulful brevity and a flood of emotion; it begins with a violent tidal wave and ends in a wash of tenderness. Three stories gradually and [...]
