Monthly Archives: March 2011

How Do You Know (2010)

Posted on March 30, 2011 by

It’s not that James L. Brooks’ sixth feature “How Do You Know” is bad; it just can’t bring the winning runner home or reach the bleachers before the game runs out. The film is about discovery and the places in life that still surprise, detour and how we get back on course or make a new road with this new-found sense of self. Sadly, not even when the guy gets the girl do we feel that we have reached the end of a satisfying journey because the extraordinary of the ordinary leaves the film before we do. Continue reading →

Posted in Movie I've Seen, Movies You Should or Should Not See, On DVD | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Next Three Days (2010)

Posted on March 17, 2011 by

The Next Three Days is a film that materializes out of hot air, loses momentum by the thirty minute mark and stumbles so fast to the finish line there is hardly time to care about the characters or the magnitude of their predicament. While it has the makings of an interesting story, Russell Crowe as an unwitting husband and father who risks everything to save his wife after she is arrested for murder, it never quite feels right and ultimately disappoints both as an action film and as a film-film. Continue reading →

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Joan Rivers Live At The Castro San Francisco

Posted on March 14, 2011 by

If you think you know all there is to know about Joan Rivers you ain’t seen nothing yet. Born Joan Alexandra Molinsky Sanger Rosenberg, she spent decades entertaining inside and outside the lime light, no stranger to controversy, she is a celebrated Emmy Award-winning American comedian, television personality and actress. Continue reading →

Posted in Essays on art, Essays on Film, In Theaters Now!, Speak-Freely | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Animal Kingdom (2010)

Posted on March 13, 2011 by

The characters in this Australian crime family drama are sharp edged as though carved from spotless steel and polished to a luster to dispel the lineage of malevolence just below the surface. The thing is, Animal Kingdom is deceptively layered and intentionally claustrophobic, relying on a careful examination of minutiae. What gives the film such resonance is reserve, and like normal family dramas, the action comes in ragged explosions of breath, belabored and tactile. Continue reading →

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The Fighter (2010)

Posted on March 11, 2011 by

The Fighter is a true story about real people that seems at time to revel in everydayness so much so that we feel like we are visiting with people we know. We know the gritty details of this world because they are not so different from our own, the verisimilitude so thick at times as to mire down but never to the point of sentimentality. Continue reading →

Posted in In Theaters Now!, Movie I've Seen, Movies You Should or Should Not See | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments