Ride is the second time Academy Award winner Helen Hunt (As Good As It Gets, The Sessions) has directed herself behind the camera. Following her portrayl of Bethany Hamilton’s mother in Soul Surfer, this is Hunt’s second time exhibiting surf skills. Ride is a beautifully unconventional love story between a mother and son. The script […]
Jack Black’s latest comedy The D Train is distributed by IFC, so you might wonder why is one of the former reining box office comedians opening a new film with a small studio? The answer is twofold, since Black’s recent films Bernie, The Big Year and Gulliver’s Travels didn’t produce profit and the “D” in
Saturday Night Live alum Kristen Wiig is a machine when it comes to delivering new work. Lately she has been producing three feature films a year, with Welcome to Me is just the latest lead role for the Oscar nominee. What feels like one of Wiig’s famous skit caricatures appearing in their own film, is
In the Name of my Daughter is based on the story of a young woman’s disappearance in France, as written by her mother and brother in a memoir about ten years after she had gone missing. André Téchiné, the French director (and co-writer of the screenplay with Cedric Anger, and the brother, Jean-Charles Le Roux)
Can a movie be too sweet? Little Boy sets out to prove that is the case and produced by Roma Downey & Mark Burnett (Son of God), we should have suspected it from the beginning. Its aim is to appease the Norman Rockwell/Andy Griffith crowd, but those days are long gone where family films are
Blake Lively wasn’t the first or second choice for this lead, however the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants actress manages to make this her own, channeling a Renee Zellweger type performance. The film’s strongest element is the narration, which should sound very familiar if you liked The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert
When a studio refuses to screen a film for critics, usually it’s a bad sign; It also makes that movie like forbidden fruit you just want to see even more. Child 44 certainly has its problems, the biggest Jonathan Price’s screenplay adaptation of Tom Rob Smith’s novel. A good screenwriter should be able to read
By all accounts, True Story should have been a gripping, taught trifecta of brilliant performances. After all in the previous two dramatic films (The Wolf of Wall Street, Moneyball) comedian Jonah Hill landed him Oscar nominations. True Story is director Rupert Goold’s first feature and the first film for Felicity Jones post Theory of Everything
Pocket thrillers are what I call these low budget, high impact star vehicles; Often thrillers that isolate two characters that do a lot of damage. Joining other pocket thrillers like Locke, Phone Booth, Buried or even Gravity, Beyond the Reach uses wide open spaces in New Mexico for terrifying effect. 70 year old Michael Douglas
American family films have become a billion dollar business, much like all the other genre films coming out of Hollywood. I remember when family films like Little Rascals, Hocus Pocus or Trading Mom, didn’t need millions for special effects, they were about values and inspiring a young generation. Paper Planes seems to have those movies