Tag Archives: review
Dave’s Movie Review: The Place Beyond the Pines
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Letter Grade:
B |
The Good: Looks and Sounds Beautiful The Bad: Long and Slow |
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Cast & Crew: Directed By: Derek Cianfrance Rated R for language throughout, some violence, teen drug and alcohol use, and a sexual reference |
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The trailers for The Place Beyond the Pines (Director/Writer Derek Cianfrance’s much anticipated follow up to the critically acclaimed and mind-blowingly depressing Blue Valentine) would have you believe that this is a star studded, Ryan Gosling/Bradley Cooper, bank heist/crime movie of sorts (similar to De Niro/Pacino in Heat). The trailers lie. In actuality, The Place Beyond the Pines is a slow-paced, sprawling tale of fatherhood. What is a father’s responsibility to family and specifically his son? How does a father provide for his family? To what lengths will a father go to provide for his family? What does a father’s actions teach his son?
The movie is a story told in three parts. Set in Schenectady, New York (Schenectady is the Mohawk word for “place beyond the pines,” see what they did there???), the first part tells about “Handsome” Luke (Ryan Gosling), a heavily tattooed, cut-off-Metallica-shirt-wearing, carny (Smells like cabbage, small hands) motorcycle daredevil vagabond. Hours before packing up and leaving town again with the carnival, Luke learns that Romina (Eva Mendes), an old one night stand, has had his child, a son named Jason. Luke recognizes his responsibly to his son and quits his carny job to stay in town and do his best to provide for his family (and maybe win Romina back in the process). Not able to earn enough money “honestly” Luke is convinced by new friend Robin (played very well by Ben Mendelsohn) to use his legendary motorcycle riding skills to rob banks. (more…)
Dave’s Movie Review: Olympus Has Fallen
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Letter Grade:
D |
The Good: Exciting (but often unrealistic) and fairly well made action sequences The Bad: Poor acting performances by a few otherwise reliable actors |
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Cast & Crew: Director: Antoine Fuqua Rated R for strong violence and language throughout |
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Ok, so here’s the deal. This is my first official review I’ve written for Cinedraft (or any site for that matter). I’m going to level with you because I want us to get off on the right foot (people keep telling me that honesty is important…). I was all ready to write a review for this movie that praised the “disaster” genre (I’m counting terrorist attack as a “disaster” for the sake of argument) and talked about how awesome it was despite being a kind of stupid action movie…I may have even gotten a head start on writing my review before seeing the movie…which was probably stupid… and maybe unethical or something… I don’t know, I’m not a journalist… what I do know is after watching Olympus Has Fallen, I couldn’t delete my optimistically positive (and
completely uneducated) “review” fast enough. I really wanted to love this movie, and as you are probably picking up on by now (through your masterful skills of mental deduction, or the big ol’ not so positive letter grade at the very top of this review), I did not love it.
Antoine Fuqua’s (Tears of the Sun, The Shooter, Training Day, Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise video) most recent movie is an action movie through and through. The White House (Code Named “Olympus”) and the President (Aaron Eckhart) are attacked and captured by Korean (I think North Korean, but to be honest it wasn’t super clear and I may just be making that assumption because those crazy North Koreans have been threatening to kill the planet again.), black hood-wearing, super-scary and evil terrorists (which I suppose is a nice break from all the Middle Eastern terrorists we’ve been subjected to recently). Luckily for America, Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), who just so happens to have something to prove after failing to protect the first family months earlier, manages to fight his way through the seemingly impenetrable wall of bad guys and machine gun fire to make his way into the White House and is now the last hope for rescuing the kidnapped President and saving the world from certain disaster. (more…)
Movie Review: Trance
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Letter Grade:
A |
The Good: Excellent acting throughout. The Bad: None |
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Cast & Crew: Director: Danny Boyle Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence, some grisly images, and language |
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Movie Review: G.I. Joe: Retaliation
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Letter Grade:
C- |
The Good: Good fight scenes. The Bad: Dull generic characters. |
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Cast & Crew: Director: Jon M. Chu Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of combat violence and martial arts action throughout, and for brief sensuality and language |
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Movie Review: Jurassic Park 3D
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Letter Grade:
A+ |
The Good: The pacing is great throughout. The Bad: None |
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Cast & Crew: Director: Steven Spielberg Rated PG-13 for intense science fiction terror |
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In Jurassic Park, an eccentric former flea circus proprietor (Richard Attenborough) pours millions (billions?) of dollars into a new theme park on an island off the shores of Costa Rica. That’s a slightly less convenient travel destination than Disney World, but if the Pirates of the Caribbean could eat the guests you wouldn’t stick that in Orlando either. When a worker dies on the island the investors start to get antsy, and require a thorough inspection of the facility. To placate them ownership brings in 3 specialists, a mathematician who specializes in Chaos Theory (Jeff Goldblum), a paleontologist (Sam Neill), and his paleobotanist sort-of-girlfriend (Laura Dern) to give the island a once-over. They arrive and are astounded to find the park features real-live dinosaurs cloned from ancient Dino-DNA (with a small assist from some frog DNA). Things go great at first, but soon things take a turn and dinosaurs are chowing down on cows, people, and poor defenseless goats, and our protagonists are left to fight for their lives. (more…)
Movie Review: 28 Weeks Later
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Letter Grade:
F+ |
The Good: Well, some of the shots are nice, when they allow them to last more than half a second and blatantly rip off Danny Boyle... The Bad: Oh God. So, soooo much... |
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Cast & Crew: Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo |
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[Originally published 5/12/2007. Edited to remove some spoilers and cursing.]
So I just saw 28 Weeks Later and… I… honestly… hated it.
And it’s weird how the hatred has grown. Halfway through the movie it was “this is a great movie that, because of incompetent direction, is just a good move”. Then 3/4 of the way through it, it was “this is a good movie that, because of incompetent direction, is just an ok movie”. Then leaving the theater it was “I… kinda… hated that….” Then by the time I got home it was “I haven’t hated a movie this much since Million Dollar Baby”. (more…)
Movie Review: Dallas 362
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Letter Grade:
B- |
The Good: Snappily written. The Bad: A low budget indie film from a first-time director, and you can tell. |
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Cast & Crew: Director: Scott Caan Rated R for pervasive language, drug use, some violence and sexuality |
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[Originally published on 4/2/2005.]
Just got out of Dallas 362, the film starring, written and directed by Scott Caan. It had its world theatrical premiere here at The Neon last night. I enjoyed it. The tone brought to mind Clerks, and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. (more…)
Movie Review: Closer
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Letter Grade:
A- |
The Good: Serves up people doing stupid things in a realistic, believable way. The Bad: You're going to want to reach into the screen and shake the characters. |
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Cast & Crew: Director: Mike Nichols |
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[Originally published 12/10/2004.]
Mike Nichols’ Closer is a heartbreaking film. It’s a film filled with people doing stupid, hurtful things, but that’s ok. Like House of Sand and Fog (and unlike John Q), the stupid decisions are completely believable. When people do stupid, irrational things simply because the writer thinks the plot needs more conflict it doesn’t work. (more…)
Movie Review: Spirited Away
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Letter Grade:
A+ |
The Good: Imaginative, great story, absolutely beautiful. The Bad: May be too much for the very young. |
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Cast & Crew: Director: Hayao Miyazaki |
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[Originally published on 9/21/2004.]
Wow. Yes, it’s Japanese. Yes, it’s animation. But Spirited Away is just a great, wonderfully imaginative, unimaginably creative, totally engrossing, uplifting, beautiful, sweet film which I completely recommend.
And there are a few elements of its style which probably would have freaked me out as a kid. None of the actions, or dialog, or situations are really scary, but the look is just odd enough to have thrown me. But that’s probably just me, I had a very similar, though very much more intense, reaction to James and the Giant Peach (boy was that movie ever creepy).
Movie Review: Spider-Man 2
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Letter Grade:
A+ |
The Good: A real exploration of Peter Parker's character. The Bad: Franco plays one note. |
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Cast & Crew: Director: Sam Raimi |
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[Originally published on 6/30/2004.]
Thought Spider-Man 2 was great! I cannot name a better superhero movie. Only Batman comes close, and I’m disqualifying that for lack of actual superpowers.
It’s not afraid to put the action on hold for a bit and have some actual storytelling, and that’s good. It’s probably a big part of what made it so good. This isn’t just an action flick; Peter Parker really has his own problems, and isn’t certain that he really can, or even wants to, play the hero. The problem with the X-Men movies has been that they just have too many people to really explore each character in depth. With 2 hours devoted to a single superhero, Spider-Man can really be fleshed out. (more…)
