Another film on my agenda for this week’s slate was the seemingly-quirky We Bought a Zoo. This movie, starring a somewhat plain Matt Damon wasn’t exactly at the top of my list of films to see. The previews really didn’t resonate with me and it all just seemed like light family fare aimed primarily at getting sighs from […]
Two psychiatric giants intellectually joust in A Dangerous Method. This biopic on the complex relationship between Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Jung’s patient/mistress (played by Keira Knightley) looked riveting from the previews. I was sold on the concept from the outset. The film comes from David Cronenberg who knows how to present a highly-disturbing story. Initially the film was everything I expected. I […]
This weekend I managed to see two Steven Spielberg movies and that usually is a recipe for a great movie-going weekend. Sadly, that wasn’t the reality. First up was War Horse. This is a bit of a strange film in that the star of the film is the horse and in a way that’s unlike […]
Earlier this year I noticed a bit of buzz regarding an upcoming movie that sounded intriguing but also extremely risky. The film—The Artist—is quite novel in that it’s a silent movie. Yep, in 2011 a film studio decided to take a chance on a quirky, fairly perilous venture and shoot a complete silent film. It’s […]
I’ve had a bit of a love-hate relationship with director Martin Scorsese‘s films over the years. I tend to find lots of things I simply don’t like about many of the films he’s known for. Sometimes you just don’t connect with someone else’s vision. As a result I really have to be wowed by a Scorsese […]
There’s been a lot of Oscar talk surrounding George Clooney and his latest film, The Descendants. Clooney’s always been a solid actor and has tried again and again to break into the top tier of actors only to not quite make it. Frankly, I’ve always felt it’s been the sex symbol curse. Many other actors […]
Take Shelter is the story of a seemingly plain Ohio husband and father who is suddenly beset by a serious of eerie hallucinations and dreams that drive him to worry about his own mental health. Should he heed the portentous signals or commit himself to psychological therapy or more? The acting here is spot-on. The lead […]
The term “The Ides of March” refers, in modern parlance, to an impending doom. It’s most common use is in the William Shakespeare play Julius Caesar who recounts a seer warning Caesar in advance of his assassination to “beware the Ides of March.” In that case it was simply a reference to the middle of […]
I don’t know anyone that wouldn’t pause for a moment to ask, “Do I really want to see a movie that’s supposed to be a comedy about cancer?” It’s just something that—like bacon and ice cream—shouldn’t be mixed—or so one might think. 50/50 is a film written by Will Reiser, a young comedy writer who […]
Back in 1985, long before fantasy baseball had become popular, I got involved in one of its ancestral forms and that experience exposed me to the importance of seeing baseball as a statistical entity requiring a different type of analysis. It also exposed me to the wonders of Bill James and his approach called Sabermetrics. […]
Way back in China’s history judges were the investigators of the day and during the Tang Dynasty there lived a noteworthy magistrate by the name of Di Renji. In the 1940’s an international author wrote a series of mystery novels loosely based on the judge now re-christened Judge Dee. Today we have a new film based on […]
This weekend I caught a foreign film called Circumstance. It’s the story of two Iranian teenagers who find themselves completely devoted to each other in a country that not only looks down upon lesbian lifestyles but women in general. As you can imagine their path to happiness is beyond rocky. The previews for this film […]