You know, I’ve seen other reviewers/bloggers lament about how weak they think this year’s crop of Oscar-nominated live-action shorts are. Maybe they’re right. Maybe not.
But at least one of the entries felt more notable because of what it could have been, rather than what it is. And that missed opportunity is the short film The New Tenants.
Kevin Smith is a very funny writer. Clerks. Mallrats. Chasing Amy. Dogma. Zack and Miri Make a Porno. He’s the kind of guy that you might not want to sit next to on a Southwest Airlines 737, but you definitely want to sit next to in a bar. As a writer, he’s not afraid to offend and insult, and as a director, he’s smart enough to always find the real heart in his characters.
It’s too bad he didn’t write Cop Out, his new movie. If he had, it might not suck so completely.
I won’t pretend to know what makes a truly great film. I think I know what many of the ingredients are, but there’s just something that’s often hard to identify that gives a really powerful film its impact. And sometimes when you’re watching a strong film, even a short, you may not fully “get” how good it really is until a few days after, when you’ve had a chance to think about it.
Miracle Fish is that kind of film.
You know, it doesn’t generally take much to get me excited about a movie. And when you tell me you’ve got a picture that has Paul Bettany, Charles S. Dutton, Dennis Quaid, hordes of zombie demons and ass-kicking angels, you’ve got a sale.
Oh, how all that potential is wasted in the film Legion.
What do you call one hour and thirty-two minutes of character-driven chaos and surprising, disturbing and hilarious violence on screen?
If it stars the absolutely brilliant, mesmerizing Tom Hardy, you call it Bronson.
(Review requested by Nadia.)
When I was asked to review The Peanut Butter Solution by my friend Nadia, my first response was, “huh?” I can’t say I had ever even heard of the movie, but hey, this is what I do, so I went out looking for a copy. What I first found were comments on various blogs from people who had seen the movie as kids. Here are some of their memories…
“It creeped me the f*#k out as a kid!”
“This movie scarred my childhood.”
“Disturbing and scary.”
This movie scared the shit out of me as a child.”
Sounds like my kind of movie.
I apologize for the blurry image above. This is a frame from the Oscar-nominated documentary Burma VJ. The man with the camera is Kenji Nagai, a Japanese journalist filming anti-government protests in Burma.
Moments after this image was captured, Nagai was shot at point-blank range and killed by Burmese soldiers.
Martin Scorsese doesn’t do “easy.”
If you want an “easy” movie, one you can stumble through, half-paying-attention, then you’d be better off going to see “The Wolfman” or “From Paris With Love.” Do that, and be content not to have to think. But please, if you do choose to see Shutter Island, Scorsese’s new film, I ask two things of you…
First, don’t give anything away with spoiler-filled reviews. And second, if you’re going to share your thoughts on the Internet, think for a moment about what you’ve typed before you hit “send.”
Watching the annual crop of Academy Award-nominated animated shorts is always a treat. But this year’s films made me wonder why it is that animated shorts are allowed to be both entertaining and thought-provoking, while feature-length animated films are generally disposable?
Making the rounds in cinemas over the next few weeks is the 2010 Oscar Shorts program, a compilation of both live-action and animated shorts up for this year’s Academy Awards.
One of the favorites in the animated category is Spain’s entry, The Lady and the Reaper.
