clock … watching time, the only true currency

I spent a recent Tuesday evening watching Star Trek, the new movie with the old name. The Batman refresh opened doors for this movie. Adding in J.J. Abrams as director, at the height of his powers (and clout), gave Star Trek a great platform to go where we’ve all gone before, gladly.
My immediate reaction?
finally caught [...]

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Rudo y Cursi was an unknown quantity when I entered the theater. A Mexican film (with subtitles) about two soccer-playing brothers, Rudo y Cursi mimics an earthier, adult Hoop Dreams. But it’s not a documentary: too raw and real to be anything but fiction.
This simple film delights in the very human flaws of the two [...]

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State of Play makes a journalist (Russell Crowe) the hero in a corporate/political thriller that tries very hard. Sometimes, the movie succeeds. But with its reconciliation of the hard-core newspaperman and the young blogger and the final credits rolling over whirring presses as the newspaper prints the damning truth…State of Play felt like the modern [...]

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Waltz with Bashir made for an eye-opening Tuesday night. One man’s animated (literally) attempt to reconstruct his role in the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Waltz with Bashir uses comic book techniques to tell a tale of young men at a war and a massacre perpetrated during that invasion. What little I know of the [...]

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The trailers for Gran Torino menace, and the film darkens your spirit from time to time. A retired auto worker buries his wife, and then faces the changes in his neighborhood with the same coldness (at first) he shows his less-than-agreeable children.
But any gloom in Clint Eastwood’s new movie is lifted by simple moments and [...]

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In the film Revolutionary Road, Kate Winslet ignores Leonardo DiCaprio’s errors, and nothing cuts colder. This snapshot of a 1950s couple’s failure to adapt their dreams to their actual life feels like a good play, with an emphasis on dialogue. Winslet stands out visually, though, as she goes beyond resentment into apathy. Ignoring someone freezes [...]

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Doctor Zhivago stretched over two nights’ viewing. At three hours and twenty minutes, even the DVD had to be flipped over to watch the part after the intermission. Loved the scenery and the sweep, though a bit too sappy overall. Also, I’ve never seen such fresh, unlined faces among those supposedly enduring the ravages of [...]

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My capsule review of Curse of the Pink Panther may be found here.

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With Frost/Nixon, I once again dove into a movie based on history. Third one in a row, I realize now. Of the unrelated trio, Frost/Nixon was the most fun. As with the movie Milk, the mid/late 1970s come to life. A surprising combination of hustle and mostly-hidden grit surfaces in the form of a talk-show [...]

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Saw Milk earlier this month. I was alive during these events, but knew nothing of them. (Of course, I was not yet 10 years old.) Curious now to know which facts were true and which were added for extra drama…especially Sean Penn as Harvey Milk narrating his memoirs in his kitchen in the event of [...]

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