Daniel Radcliffe acquits himself reasonably well in his first adult big-screen role, a man haunted by The Woman in Black.
Movie review: ‘Big Miracle’ is film family can enjoy
The title isn’t an exaggeration. It was something of a Big Miracle, the way the plight of a family of gray whales, stranded under the Alaska ice, captivated the country and forced oil men and environmentalists, natives and Cold War foes to team up back in the waning days of the Reagan administration.
Movie review: ‘One for the Money’
‘Dangerous Method’: A talky affair
January 25, 2012 Leave a Comment Filed under: Featured, Featured 2, Movies, On Screen, Rich Heldenfels
Director David Cronenberg took a decidedly idiosyncratic turn in his latest film, shifting from grim tales of violence and betrayal (Eastern Promises, A History of Violence) to a grim tale of psychoanalysis and sex.
Movie review: Close almost too stoic in ‘Albert Nobbs’
The role of Albert Nobbs is one that’s been near to Glenn Close’s heart for a while. She first played it 30 years ago off-Broadway and reprises it now in a project she’s been working for some time to bring to the screen.
Movie review: ‘The Grey’ wastes a promising premise
The Grey is an old-fashioned survival tale harboring pretensions that it is something more. Not a lot more — just a hint of the psycho-cerebral here, a smidgen of the primal and primitive there.
Movie Review: Fassbender lays himself bare in ‘Shame’
Movie review: ‘Extremely Loud’ close but no cigar
January 18, 2012 Leave a Comment Filed under: Featured, Featured 2, Movies, On Screen, Rich Heldenfels
There are sections of the movie Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close that are very effective emotionally, and not because they involve the devastation of 9/11. Rather, they dig deep into the feelings that arise with any abrupt loss of a loved one, especially for a child to whom any such loss is incomprehensible and enraging.
Movie review: ‘Haywire’ light, low-key entertainment
January 18, 2012 Leave a Comment Filed under: Featured, Featured 2, Movies, On Screen, Rich Heldenfels
In an age when the idea behind action movies seems to be making everything as big, loud and fast as possible, Haywire is a refreshingly modest variation on the form.
Movie review: ‘Red Tails’ only occasionally soars
Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ still glorious in 3-D
That “tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme” returns to the screen, now in 3-D. But Beauty and the Beast, the greatest animated film ever made and one of the screen’s great musicals, hardly needs this sort of sprucing up.
Streep excellent in adequate movie about Thatcher
The Iron Lady, a new film about former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, boasts a stunning performance by Meryl Streep, who seldom presents work that is less than stunning. And the movie overall is effective in presenting Thatcher as a likable but driven and at times contradictory woman who changed the course of British history.
‘Carnage’ a glorious descent into hatred
In Hollywood terms, Carnage is relatively tame violence-wise. A pet hamster may be in peril, a bunch of tulips get mauled and a cell phone is abused, but that’s pretty much it. There’s more actual carnage in Puss in Boots.
Movie review: ‘The Women on the 6th Floor’
Fabrice Luchini is one of the delights of world cinema, and in The Women on the 6th Floor, he finds a role ideally suited to his odd mix of fussiness and sensitivity. He plays a Paris financier in the 1960s, who lives a staid and rather self-satisfied existence, until he starts taking an interest in his new maid.