Thank you, Kenneth Branagh. Apparently I needed a few naps. I know, I know. Many people thoroughly enjoyed watching the latest film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s oh-so-popular mystery novel of the same name. The film has made money. And I looked forward to it for personal reasons. Alas, the sweeping but painfully slow music, the…
Go. See. This. Movie. Okay, sure, it highlights and explains a fair part* of the greed and corruption that led to our economic crisis in 2007/2008. And yes, I wish more people would understand the risk of un(or under)regulated Wall Street. But it’s also a really great film! The Big Short patiently (and partially) explains (quite…
The Danish Girl is a beautiful film—warm and thought-provoking. It moved a bit too slowly for my preference, but I get that. It is about the characters and their difficult journey in navigating an emotional state of their marriage and life. This character study needed a pulled-back pace. It needed time to reflect on what…
Excellent movie. Excellent. I should back up. I cannot unread the book. And the book was phenomenal. But that, to me, makes the movie even better: it was beautifully true to the book. To its voice. To its story. To its feel. The book is written from the perspective of young Jack. Five years old.…
Charming. Soft. Lovely. Touching. Bittersweet. These are the new film, adapted from the novel, Brooklyn. It’s a wonderfully quiet film, entertaining gently, but leaving the viewer better for sharing the story—the story of a young girl as she moves from Ireland to Brooklyn, starting life over in the 1950s. It is not just a story…
Those who’ve been reading my thoughts might remember my urging—my insistence—to read Andy Weir’s The Martian when I wrote about it exactly six months ago today. And I know that many of you heeded that advice. Loved it, yes? 😉 And today—-finally. It’s Fall. And the movie is in wide release. Yay! First, biggest of thanks…
When, with little notice, my movie companion was free for the evening for a film, I scrambled to find something suitable for both of us (said companion has displayed great patience in the past with my leanings toward less-than-blockbuster-esque films). Enter Black Mass—a decent enough crime drama with some violence, a lot of mobsters, and…
I’ve never read David Foster Wallace’s work (yet), but you needn’t have in order to dive deep into the new movie about his interview by Rolling Stone’s David Lipsky, who spent several days with the author while Wallace wrapped up his book tour on the heels of publishing Infinite Jest in 1996. After Wallace’s suicide…
Paper Towns is an easy read and a fine enough book. It’s not great. It’s not deep. It’s not much of anything remarkable. But fine enough, that it is. As I continue blending genres of books, it is nice to return every so often to a quick read that doesn’t hide much and doesn’t try…
I’ve said before that sometimes I need time before I write about a movie. Usually, that’s just a couple or a few days to let a movie sit and settle inside of my mind, wanting my review to reflect not only my gut reaction but also any lingering impressions. American Sniper, though, took weeks. Several…
Still Alice is one of the great movies of the year that everyone should see. It’s heartbreaking. It’s earnest. It’s painful. It’s real. No, it’s not based on a true story, but it is based on deep research. The premise is early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease, and although at its base it really is just the story…
The trailer for Inherent Vice made it seem that this movie would be a fun, quirky (albeit a little dark) movie with a fantastic cast. At the end of the film, the only word I really came up with, though, was “bizarre.” And bizarre is too far from quirky for me. Not that the movie…
First, I should note that I did not read the book Unbroken. And unlike my norm, I heard a bit too much about the film before seeing it. Whether that colored my perception of the movie, I’ll never know for certain, but it is a factor to consider in understanding the various views of the…
For many (if not most) people, watching Wild will be a view from the outside of a woman on a journey to heal her soul as she hikes the Pacific Crest Trail. For me, it was a journey of my own as I tested the fortitude of the healing scars of my own path. Wild…
Dark and gritty, Nightcrawler takes viewers on a ride with Jake Gyllenhaal at the wheel. Buckle up: it’s a wild one. I was tired the night I saw this film, having not slept well the previous night. And alas, the theater we planned to visit changed its schedule, so we had to change plans from…