Tag: reviews

MOVIE REVIEW: Gravity

Kudos to director Alfonso Cuarón, who WILL deservedly win the Oscar for Best Director.

gravitySo much I hated about going to the movies that Sunday afternoon to see Gravity:

1) It was at Crossgates, a local mall I particularly loathe. Don’t believe I had seen a movie there since Presidents Day weekend 16 years ago, nearly to the day, when I saw L.A. Confidential and Mrs. Brown, both Oscar nominees. But it was the only place locally it was playing, and seeing it later on video seemed to be a much lesser experience. And SamuraiFrog was so fond of it.

2) The movie was only available in 3D. I tend to hate 3D. Indeed, the preview of the upcoming X-Men movie looked like looking through one of those old ViewMasters I had as a kid; boy, I hope the MOVIE doesn’t look that weird.

3) Saw this news piece on NBC “revealing” how they got Sandra Bullock’s character to appear to be in zero gravity, noting that if she REALLY were, her hair would stand up, just one of the scientific errors in the movie.

Yet, I really enjoyed the film, both as a technological marvel, despite its flaws, and as a reflection on life and death and rebirth, sorrow and release. This summary from Deadspin spoke to me: “You want to admire the technical achievement, except it never feels like a technical achievement. It just feels like you’re there. And desperately want to leave.” The Wife was on the edge of her seat, sometimes literally. There were moments I forgot to breathe.

Kudos to Bullock and George Clooney as the astronauts, the cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and especially director Alfonso Cuarón, who WILL deservedly win the Oscar for Best Director.

MOVIE REVIEW: Philomena

Steve Coogan co-wrote the screenplay with Jeff Pope, based on Martin Sixsmith’s book, “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee.”

Philomena_posterI was watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart recently, and Steve Coogan was on talking about the movie Philomena. I must admit that I had no real idea who he was. When I was talking at work about the fact that The Wife and I gave the movie two thumbs up after we had seen it a couple of weekends ago at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, one of my colleagues said, “But doesn’t it star Steve Coogan?” After I confirmed this, she indicated that he always plays a real jerk in movies, particularly in some comedies I had never seen.

As “world-weary political journalist” Martin Sixsmith, Coogan’s character is more than a little arrogant as he lowers himself to investigate “the story of a woman’s search for her son, who was taken away from her decades ago after she became pregnant and was forced to live in a convent.” He finds the now-aging Philomena (Judi Dench) quite pedestrian. But during the journey to two continents, he develops a different relationship with her.

Coogan not only costars in the film, but he also co-wrote the screenplay with Jeff Pope, based on Sixsmith’s book, “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee,” after he happened upon an article about the true story. AND he is a producer of the film.

Ever since I saw the film, I’ve wanted to extol its praises, including the fact that the trailer does not give away too much. But the less you know, the better your viewing experience will be. I will say the second half of the touching film is even better than the first, Dench and Coogan are very fine, at under 100 minutes it is efficiently made, and that a late American President figures prominently in the narrative.

OK, since the Academy Awards nominations were announced – it’s up for Best Picture and Dench for Best Actress – there’s been a debate whether the Church gets a pass; that, I think, is not the film I saw.

MOVIE REVIEW: Frozen

I predict there will be a Broadway version of Frozen by 2018.

It was a very rainy Sunday afternoon. The Wife, The Daughter and I were supposed to travel from Albany to near Binghamton for a family dinner, but the forecast for locations in between were dodgy, with snow and ice likely. Instead, we went out to lunch, and then to Colonie Center Mall to see the newish Disney animated film Frozen.

frozen1
Some bullet points:
*THIS FILM IS GORGEOUS. Continue reading “MOVIE REVIEW: Frozen”

MOVIE REVIEW: American Hustle

American Hustle is a very fine movie, about crime and ambition and loyalties.

Neither the Wife or I had not been to a movie designed for grownups since July. The autumn was WAY too busy for our liking, and we missed Gravity and Saving Captain Phillips, a couple of movies we might have otherwise seen. Finally, during Christmas break, we got a child sitter so we could go out to the Spectrum 8 Theatre in Albany.

Frankly, at that point, I would have seen ANY of the films playing there except The Hobbit (didn’t see the first one, so seeing the second in a trilogy made no sense.)

My spouse picked American Hustle. I knew little about this except that it featured some of the same folks from Silver Lings Playbook, actors Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, and director David O. Russell, who also co-wrote this screenplay with Eric Warren Singer.

Do you remember ABSCAM? It was an FBI “sting operation… in the late 1970s and early 1980s.” American Hustle took the framework of that real event and made it into something else entirely. This couple (Christian Bale as Irving, whose combover should be nominated for something, and Amy Adams as Sydney, who was in Russell’s The Fighter) click as successful con artists until caught by the law and forced to work scams to entrap other bad guys by their overzealous FBI handler (Richie, played by Bradley Cooper.) What’s going on betwixt the gumshoe and the moll? Gumming things up further is Irving’s needy and largely abandoned wife, Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence, who almost steals the movie).

Without giving away too much, this is a very fine movie, about crime and ambition and loyalties, which is at least a couple of times laugh-out-loud funny at lines that, on paper, are not that humorous. Other great performances by Jeremy Renner as a New Jersey politician, and Louis CK as a mid-level FBI guy. De Niro plays that De Niro role, which is just fine for these purposes.

At least some of the critical complaints involve the fact that some of the characters have positive outcomes, which certainly doesn’t seem like such a terrible thing, given the complicated schemes and definite peril they find themselves in. In fact, the plot was occasionally SO convoluted, The Wife wasn’t always quite sure what was going on, which did not diminish from her enjoyment; I THINK I had it all figured out, eventually.

Rated R, but I’d say, in the grand scheme of American cinema, a soft R, in my book.

Reluctant, late BOOK REVIEW: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library

The premise of the book is that the town had lost its library, and that the 12-year-olds had gone their entire lives without ANY library.

The intrepid New York Erratic asks:

What’s the most recent fiction book you’ve read?

You ask a simple question, and I have a simple, then complicated, answer.

The book was Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein, which became a New York Times Bestseller.

Lucky Kyle wins a spot as one of the first twelve kids invited to a gala, overnight library lock-in filled with of fun and games. But the next morning, when the lock-in is supposed to be over, the doors remain locked. Kyle and the others must follow book-related clues and unravel all sorts of secret puzzles to find the hidden escape route if they want to win Mr. Lemoncello’s most fabulous prize ever.

Which I’m not sure is quite accurate, from the book I read, but no matter.

It’s gotten good press.

I received a review copy of this book in February of 2013 and read it in a couple of weeks. Then I was trying to write that assessment of the book, but I just couldn’t. The reason was that there were elements of the book that just irritated the heck out of me, and I didn’t know if I were being overly critical, or that Young Adult fiction just wasn’t my genre. Nah, I’ve read other YA books and didn’t have that reaction.

OK, the things that bugged me:

1. The premise of the book is that the town had lost its library and that the 12-year-olds had gone their entire lives without ANY library, but then the benefactor, the toy guru, builds this beyond state-of-the-art structure. I know it’s pretending, but could not this guy had SOME temporary structure operational in the interim?

2. For young people without a library, they know astonishing detail about the Dewey Decimal system, far more than this librarian could glean off the top of my head.

3. The conflict that Kyle had at home was actually quite appealing, but once he got into the library, he wasn’t that interesting a character to me.

4. A minor point, but this was supposed to be a game designed by a toy and game guru. Yet there was a reference to the real game SORRY, with a character going back three spaces. There’s no such card in SORRY; one can go back four spaces with a 4, or one space with a 10. Took me right out of the match.

5. The relationship of one of the other 12-year-olds with a famous librarian was just too convenient for me.

6. There were rebus puzzles that I simply did not understand; it may have been rectified in the actual store printing, but what I saw confounded me.

This obligation to write this review hung over me for months, with the publisher’s representative periodically nudging me, and me trying to write it without finding a satisfactory angle that wasn’t negative.

It wasn’t that it was all bad, though a tad convoluted, but it just didn’t engage me enough, and I couldn’t tell if it were the book or me. And the review hanging over my head prevented me from reading ANY book for three months, figuring if I started reading something else, I’d NEVER write the review. Finally, I gave up.

When there is a nonfiction book for general audiences, or a music album, or a movie, or any number of other items I could be asked to review, I could do it. And if I had LOVED this book, I probably could have written something about it, too. Dissing it, though, when I didn’t feel versed enough in the genre was just not something I was comfortable with.

And, NYE, if you hadn’t forced the issue, I STILL would not have written about it. (The pain and pleasure of Ask Roger Anything.)

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