Archive for the 'movie reviews' Category

ME & ORSON WELLES – Reviewed by J.D.

So much has been written about Orson Welles in the last twenty years that it almost feels as though he were a character created by Scott Fitzgerald, a wonderful idea of something worth aspiring to in an attempt to explain a lost moment of time when the United States still felt new. [...]

HARRY BROWN – Reviewed by David

Don’t let the fancy-sounding English accents fool you. Harry Brown is a vigilante flick, pure and simple, a bleak and bloody blending of Death Wish and Gran Torino starring Michael Caine that just happens to be set in England.
Caine plays an ex-serviceman living in a South London neighborhood where gangs of drug-pushing punks [...]

RED RIDING TRILOGY – Reviewed by J.D.

It’s grim up North.
This, in a nutshell, is the philosophy of novelist David Peace, a native of Yorkshire in England, whose series of books about crime and corruption are the base for this excellent trilogy, originally broadcast on the BBC. Peace is a progenitor of pulp, and obvious student of American [...]

DOCUMENTARY ROUNDUP – August 2010

Want to watch something interesting, informative and maybe even inspiring? Many of our recent documentary releases fit that bill–here’s what’s new to our rental shelves this month:

CITY ISLAND – Reviewed by Bruce

Andy Garcia plays an Italian-American prison guard from the Bronx, who yearns to be an actor in the mode of Marlon Brando, in this charming little movie that grew on me as it evolved to its satisfying ending. City Island played for a long, long run at the Chez Artiste in Denver, and I [...]

THE BACK-UP PLAN – Reviewed by Lucien K. Jenkins

Hey Y’all. The Back-up Plan is the newest film from Jennifer Lopez, heretofore known as JLo. In it JLo plays a single woman who desperately wants a baby. So she goes under her mattress, and gets the $20,000 for in vitro, which magically works the first time. Only the second she gets [...]

THE SQUARE – Reviewed by David

As a movie, The Square, a low-budget Australian thriller produced sometime in 2008, is far less energetic than its DVD preview would have you believe, but is saved by a first-rate script that renders it reminiscent of the best noir flicks.

TEMPLE GRANDIN – Reviewed by Will

Temple Grandin. Now there’s a name that was ready-built for fame and consequence. It’s a name that may only now be entering household use, but Grandin’s influence, both as a professional and as an example to others, has had a significant impact for decades, in this country and elsewhere. Few [...]

THE CITY OF YOUR FINAL DESTINATION – Reviewed by Bruce

The City of Your Final Destination is the first Merchant-Ivory film to be produced after the death of producer Ismail Merchant. As directed by the now 82-year-old James Ivory, City is an actor’s showcase, nominally about a young man attempting to write an authorized biography of a deceased South American writer.

FURRY VENGEANCE – Reviewed by David

I hated this lazy family flick with, well, a vengeance. It’s awful. Basically an hour and a half of star Brendan Fraser being humiliated by a bunch of animals. You might be able to tolerate it if you’re under 9, but adults should try not to look directly at the screen while it’s [...]

Next Page »