Grandma
Every now and then a film comes along featuring an actor seemingly playing him/herself. As an audience, we bring our preconceptions to the table, adding our media-fueled imaginings to the mix. It...
View ArticleNo Escape
Owen Wilson and Lake Bell are known primarily as comedic actors but both turn in gripping dramatic performances in this run of the mill, American Tourists in Jeopardy, action thriller. With a...
View ArticleTime Out of Mind
Just as it’s easier to avert one’s eyes on the street from a passed out homeless person, or a begging vagrant, it might be tempting to avoid this effective docu-drama from Oren Moverman, the director...
View ArticleA Walk in the Woods
A more apt title might be “A Slow Shuffle along a Path”. But that doesn’t have quite the same ring does it? Adapting the 1998 memoir/travelogue by Bill Bryson, director Ken Kwapis (“He’s Just Not That...
View ArticleBlack Mass
With his upturned black leather collar, strangely pale mien and piercing blue eyes with pin-prick pupils, James “Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp) looks a lot like Count Dracula. And director Scott Cooper...
View ArticleThe Intern
“The Intern” is a pleasant if over-long meander through leafy Brownstone Brooklyn where parking spots are never in short supply and designer kitchens are the norm. We are in Nancy Meyers’ land, the...
View ArticleThe Martian
Recent findings of water on Mars may be thrilling for NASA scientists but have come too late for astronaut Mark Watley (Matt Damon) who finds himself stranded on a dusty planet with a serious...
View ArticleSteve Jobs
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs couldn’t have a better name. His single-minded devotion to his work at the expense of personal relationships in his life is well known. After the Ashton Kutcher starrer...
View ArticleTruth
Can a film, especially one adapted from a personal memoir, ever portray the truth? If truth shifts depending on the perspective, then what do we believe, especially if the “truth” appears to be...
View ArticleSuffragette
“Deeds not words” is the battle cry of Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the women’s suffrage movement in Britain in 1912. It’s a dangerous exhortation, especially these days when terrorism has become...
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