If A Film Unfinished were nothing but 60 minutes of raw Nazi propaganda footage filmed in the Warsaw Ghetto, it would still be the most affecting film viewers have seen in a very long time. If the five silent reels found in an East German bunker nine years after the[Read More…]
Film and TV
We get it: life is meaningless
Anybody who’s seen Annie Hall, Manhattan, or Sleeper knows that when it comes to comedy, Woody Allen is a genius. His scripts, his unique brand of neuroticism, and the depth of the themes he explores make him one of the most important filmmakers of our time. But in the[Read More…]
Fair Game breaks the rules
Boston.com Warning: If you don’t remember the Valerie Plame affair of a few years ago, you should brush up on the scandal before going to see Fair Game, the new movie based on the story. Naomi Watts plays Valerie Wilson (know to her colleagues by the pseudonym Valerie Plame), an[Read More…]
Glee Grows Up
Glee. The word is instantly recognizable, and not just because it’s part of the English language. The ubiquitous television show has become an unstoppable machine since its inception, and its popularity has reached staggering heights in recent months. Now in its second season, the show delivers a weekly dose of[Read More…]
A blue-headed villain
About 15 minutes into Megamind, the movie’s eponymous villain succeeds in defeating Metro Man, the Superman-like hero, giving Megamind control of Metro City. But after moving into city hall and exhausting his list of destructive pranks (launching fire trucks into the sides of buildings, painting blue moustaches on portraits), Megamind[Read More…]
Betting the farm on a big red horse
Slash Films I went to see Secretariat having walked through rain for eight blocks to get to the theatre. I was miserable. An hour and a half later I walked out happy. Granted, I had to endure some Disney-patented melodrama to get there, but for once I didn’t mind. Secretariat[Read More…]
Katherine Heigl ain’t knocked up, but she still has a baby
When walking into a romantic comedy, there is a basic narrative you can expect: boy meets pretty girl, a bunch of stuff in between, and the eventual union of the two. Life As We Know It, however, doesn’t follow this classic romantic comedy formula Holly (Katherine Heigl) is an up-tight[Read More…]
500 million is the loneliest number
junebugreview.com In the opening minutes of The Social Network, David Fincher’s new film about the founding of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg’s girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara) breaks up with him in a Cambridge bar. “You’re going to be successful and rich,” she tells him as she gets up to leave. “But you’re[Read More…]
Like daughter, like mother
You Again could have been written by a group of moms to convince their daughters that they can move past high school trauma. Successful publicist Marni (Kristen Bell) comes back home to finally meet her beloved brother’s bride-to-be, and finds that it’s her old high school bully Joanna (Odette Yustman).[Read More…]
His town
At one point in The Town, Doug MacRay gazes upward at an airplane jetting through the sky, signifying the possibility of life beyond small-town Boston. But the image is as fleeting as the lives of the bank-robbing bandits the film portrays, and it seems as though MacRay (played by a melancholy Ben Affleck) is in this town to stay.
