This review was originally published at Awards Circuit during the Sundance Film Festival.
Every so often as a critic you get the opportunity to witness a film that’s so ingrained in your experience that it becomes difficult to even comprehend how you feel about the film. On one hand, Fruitvale Station is a rich, if slightly problematic, retelling of the day in the life of Oscar Grant, the Oakland man who was shot by police officers on New Year’s Day 2009. On the other is innate sense of personal relevance. I can still tell you exactly where I was sitting when I heard about him getting shot, the worry on my parent’s (and to speak the truth, all Black parents) faces that something like this could happen to me (their children), and the anger, not just African Americans, but most Bay Area residents felt when the officer who shot him was only sentenced to two years jail time. There’s no way to divorce those experiences from watching a film like this. However the movie doesn’t ask you to, it just wants you to be in the moment as it tells it’s story. For those reasons, Fruitvale Station is a feat of movie making, something that operates well within the medium and invites you to bring your emotions along for the ride.
Verdict: The Bling Ring could have been an interesting exploration of vices but this film is just as vapid as it’s protagonists. It’s all surface delights that fade away. Outside of the first Paris break in and the robbing of Audrina Patridge’s house, there’s no visualy interesting elements. Isreal Broussard and Emma Watson are the
Given that I have seen a documentary about BDSM porn with explicit scenes, I am hard pressed to consider This Is the End the strangest film I’ve seen this year. However, it’s certainly the craziest thing to come out of a big studio in a while, with it’s million and one celeb cameos, raucous atmosphere, and wild twists and turns. To say that this film is funny would probably be an understatement, and yet the laughs don’t quite go as far as the running time of the jokes.
Full disclosure before I start this review, I have never much liked The Great Gatsby in any form. The previous movie versions are dreadful and the book, while thematically fantastic never leaps off the page given the character’s unlikability and voice over type narration. However, I tried to purge my mind of these feelings when I sat down for my screening. That wouldn’t be hard as the movie’s marketing was so good and the visuals so lush, I found myself anticipating the film far more than I thought I would be. And while Baz Luhrman’s glamorous remake of The Great Gatsby manages to make love to your eyes balls with it’s period costumes and dazzling production design it is unfortunately it’s the cinematic equivalent of blue balls, leaving you disappointed and unfulfilled.
So this is the start of my new review series, where I shall attempt at giving various portions of films a letter grade and then summing them up. First up is the epic Agora. Here is the imdb synopsis:“A historical drama set in Roman Egypt, concerning a slave who turns to the rising tide of
With a fantastic script, excellent performances, and interesting subject matter, The Kids Are All Right, directed by Lisa Cholodenko, manages to be both heart-warming and emotionally wringing. Without giving too much away, this is the story of a family with two moms, Nic and Jules (Annette Benning and Julianne Moore) and their two kids, Laser and Joni