Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Short Take: Emotionally taxing and anxiety-inducing, but clearly one of this year's best films

Director: Jeff Nichols

Screenwriter: Jeff Nichols

Cast: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain

Length: 2h

Synopsis: Curtis (Shannon) is a husband, father, and construction worker whose main concern is providing for his family. Recently, however, he’s been experiencing vivid nightmares involving terrible storms that compel him to expensively modify the storm shelter behind his rural home. With his worries seemingly unfounded, his efforts cause his wife (Chastain), friends, and community to suspect that he’s succumbing to psychosis just like his mother did when he was young. The project takes a financial and emotional toll that threatens his marriage and way of life, but he just can’t shake the feeling that another kind of catastrophe lies just over the horizon. He tries desperately to seek help, but finds that the only way to ease his anxiety is to finish creating that which is meant to protect what he’s so close to losing. What happens after it’s finished, however, will end up challenging him the most.

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Short Take: Arguably what "Salt" or "Columbiana" should have been

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Screenwriter: Lem Dobbs

Cast: Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Michael Angarano, Bill Paxton

Length: 1h 33m

Synopsis: In a world where you live only for as long as you can defend yourself against stiff physical assaults and the occasional poor judgment of character, there exists Mallory (Carano). A freelancing black ops agent of sorts, her dedication, awareness, savvy, and tenacity have made her one of the most sought after of her kind. After a rescue mission that didn’t go as smoothly as it should have, she begins to suspect that one of her more frequent employers, known only as Kenneth (McGregor), has been planning to set her up for failure. As a test, Mallory takes up his newest assignment where she’ll be working with another agent named Paul (Fassbender), who it turns out is in fact part of a double-cross. Surviving the betrayal placed a giant target on her back, and now she’s on the run looking to clear her name and get revenge on those responsible.

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Short Take: It assumes its shock value will hide how pretentious and hollow it truly is

Director: Julia Leigh

Screenwriter: Julia Leigh

Cast: Emily Browning, Rachael Blake, Ewen Leslie

Length: 1h 44m

Synopsis: Lucy (Browning) is a 20-something college student trying to scrape by with what little money she’s able to work for. She waitresses, prints copy at a local office, and offers herself to the school labs for the occasional lab-rat-like testing. When she’s not working, we find her courting middle-aged men in swanky bars, showing off an appetite for the erotic. When she answers an ad for an unorthodox waitressing job, posted by a mysterious but obviously wealthy woman named Clara (Blake), she’s told that the job involves being scantily clad but absolutely no sex. Lucy tests out this well-paying, if not unusual gig only to find herself with an even higher paying and more unusual offer. This time she’s propositioned by Clara to come to a secluded mansion to simply take a sleeping potion, where she’ll wake up after a few hours and be driven straight home. What Lucy doesn’t know is that when she’s fast asleep Clara sells time with her unconscious body to elderly gentlemen callers, who proceed to have their way with her. By the end, Lucy is forced to question her willingness to do almost anything for money.

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Short Take: An all around solid effort on a cool premise, but couldn't reach the point of excellence it was trying to

Director: Gonzalo López-Gallego

Screenwriter: Brian Miller

Cast: Warren Christie, Ryan Robbins, Lloyd Owen

Length: 1h 17m

Synopsis: In 1973 astronauts Ben Anderson (Christie), John Grey (Robbins), and Nathan Walker (Owen) are asked to lead the originally canceled Apollo 18 lunar expedition in order to place missile-detecting equipment on the moon in defense against the Soviet Union. Unlike the other Apollo missions, however, this one is Top Secret. Not even the astronauts’ families know where they’re going, but what’s worse is that they never return. Fast-forward to present day: 84 hours of video footage which captured what went on during the mission somehow made its way onto the internet, and the film we see is a spliced together version of all of it all. The fate of the astronauts, we see, was a horrifying one. Aside from finding themselves stranded, they faced creatures that give new meaning to the term extra-terrestrial. For those wondering why we haven’t been back to the moon, Apollo 18 provides the answer.

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Short Take: A harrowing story that's emotional but not sappy. Distinctly Spielbergian.

Director: Steven Spielberg

Screenwriters: Lee Hall and Richard Curtis; Michael Morpurgo (novel)

Cast: Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, Peter Mullen, Niels Arestrup, David Thewlis, Tom Hiddleston

Length: 2h 26m

Synopsis: It is the era of World War I. The horse of a poor farmer boy (Irvine), named Joey, is sold to the English cavalry so that his family can pay the debt on their farm. Distraught, the boy offers to enlist in the army but is too young. From then on the horse changes hands from a Captain (Hiddleston), to a grandfather (Arestrup) and his granddaughter (Celine Buckens), and a handful of others. All who find themselves in charge of the horse fall in love with it. In having so many different owners Joey ends up traveling far from his original home, and although he has affections for some of his new owners he ultimately seeks to return to the poor farmer boy who raised him. In the end, as property of the German army, Joey risks everything in a desperate charge towards English forces in the hope that he can finally find his way home. Like the soldiers who surround him, Joey demonstrates the kind of bravery that few look to prove they have. But will it be enough?

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Short Take: Every bit as much fun as its predecessors

Director: Brad Bird

Screenwriters: Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec

Cast: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Michael Nyqvist, Paula Patton

Length: 2h 13m

Synopsis: After an IMF agent is killed in an effort to capture the launch codes for Russian nuclear warheads, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his crack team of agents are assigned to find out who took the codes and why. Their efforts, however, lead them to being framed for the destruction of the Moscow Kremlin, which makes Ethan Russia’s most wanted and forces IMF to disavow all of its agents. So with no help from IMF and a huge target on their backs, Ethan and Co. must prevent the stolen launch codes from getting into the wrong hands. Crazy and elaborate plans ensue, with stunts and chases aplenty. What we see may possibly be their biggest challenge yet.

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Short Take: Gets the atmosphere of the books, but not quite its most important aspect: its female lead.

Director: David Fincher

Screenwriters: Steven Zaillian (screenplay), Stieg Larsson (novel)

Cast: Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, Yorick van Wageningen

Length: 2 hours 38 minutes

Synopsis: Based on the international bestselling thriller of the same title, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo tells the story of disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Craig) and computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Mara) as they investigate a decades-old mystery. In the 1960s, Harriet Vanger disappeared from her family’s private island home in Hedestad, Sweden. Blomkvist agrees to investigate her disappearance after losing a libel case that destroys his credibility. Salander soon becomes his research assistant and as their personal connection intensifies, they are nearly added to to its list of victims.

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Short Take: An homage to Hollywood that comments on the contemporary film business by looking back to an earlier time.

Director: Michel Hazanavicius

Screenwriter: Michel Hazanavicius

Cast: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman

Length: 1 hour 40 minutes

Synopsis:It’s 1927 and George Valentin (Dujardin) is a Hollywood silent film actor at the height of his career. At the premiere of his newest film, he bumps into a young, aspiring actress named Peppy Miller (Bejo) and poses for pictures with her. They meet again when she appears as an extra in his next film and he encourages the studio-head, Al Zimmer (Goodman), to use her in more films. Zimmer soon decides to exclusively produce sound films and chooses Peppy as one of his new stars. He offers George the chance to transition as well, but George rejects the new technology and strikes off on his own to make his own great silent. When George’s film fails and the stock market crash leaves him broke, he is forced to face the reality that his career is over. Peppy, on the other hand, becomes a great star and though their lives are on divergent paths, she and George still feel a connection. Read the rest of this entry »

Short Take: Remarkable mainly for Michelle Williams's embodiment of Marilyn Monroe's appeal

Director: Simon Curits

Screenwriters: Adrian Hodges (Screenplay), Colin Clark (Memoirs)

Cast: Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh

Runtime: 1 hour 39 minutes

Synopsis: My Week with Marilyn tells the true story of Colin Clarke (Redmayne), a young man desperate to break into the film business who fights his way onto the 1957 film, The Prince and the Showgirl. As the third assistant director, Colin gets to see both sides of the personality clash between the film’s director and leading man, Sir Laurence Olivier (Branagh), and its leading lady, Marilyn Monroe (Williams). Marilyn soon takes a liking to Colin and as he becomes increasingly enthralled with the sultry star, he becomes more determined to save her from the pressures of fame.

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Short Take: Without the usual grounding presence of Kristen Stewart it's too melodramatic for its own good

Director: Bill Condon

Screenwriters: Melissa Rosenberg (screenplay), Stephenie Meyer (novel)

Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

Length: 1 hour 57 minutes

Synopsis: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 opens with Bella (Stewart) and her vampire boyfriend Edward (Pattinson) on the cusp of eternal happiness. Their lavish wedding marks the beginning of the end of Bella’s human life. She bids farewell to her parents and friends, knowing that transforming into a vampire means never being able to see them again. The happy couple sets off on their honeymoon to a private island in Brazil to finally consummate their relationship. However, things take a bad turn when the impossible happens and Bella finds herself pregnant with a hybrid vampire-human child. Against the advice of everyone around her, Bella decides to keep the baby. As it drains the life out of Bella, Edward and werewolf Jacob (Lautner) worry that the woman they love won’t survive.

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