The first thing you should know about Crazy Heart – a simple yet searing portrait of a tired and broken country music artist named Bad Blake – is it will bring to Jeff Bridges (Iron Man) his first-ever Academy Award win out of five nominations over the last 40 years. You should also know if you live in Cache Valley and plan to see this movie, you’ll have to head south to Ogden, where it’s showing at the Megaplex 13 …
Category: Reviews
Those French. They may look down their collective noses at fat Americans, but they sure do love the way we get s**t done. Luc Besson– cinema’s most prolific Frenchman— has unleashed another action drenched story template (ala Taken, The Transporter) and cozied up with his “Besson School of Filmmaking” graduate Pierre Morel (Taken and the upcoming Dune remake) to offer up the guiltily pleasurable From Paris With Love. Together, Besson and Morel massage French-American relations like it’s nobody’s business. If …
Some of cinemas most satisfying experiences can be found in small, quiet movies. The kind that don’t bowl you over with strength of their story, but rather the subtle unwrapping of their soul. Films whose strengths expand on the accessibility of its characters thanks in large part to actors who lose themselves in their roles. Crazy Heart is one of those films and Jeff Bridges is one of those actors. If you’ve seen the trailer for Crazy Heart, you’ve sampled …
When in Rome is an absolute travesty of a movie and so painful and upsetting that a night of reveling in latex and sadomasochistic groin clobbering would be a preferred alternative to the sheer misery of this so-called romantic comedy starring Kristen Bell (Couples Retreat) and Josh Duhamel (Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen). 29 days into 2010, it is now cemented as the worst movie of the year thus far and easily the crappiest thing to come to multiplexes …
As a parent, there’s no prospect worse than that of losing your child. To have the soul you’ve nurtured from innocence to independence stolen– even worse, violently– is the stuff that inspires the inkiest thoughts of revenge in the most law abiding of citizens. How much closer to darkness would an individual be if they had the means and wherewithal to do something about it? Edge of Darkness wants to explore that grief-born fulcrum and a host of other potentially …
I read Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones in 2002 shortly after a close friend’s daughter died in a summer boating accident. We were both young parents back then – he with three young girls, and me with a four year-old daughter. My heart ached for him because, as a father, I could totally fathom the sheer and seemingly never-ending hurt flowing through his soul. Unexpected death is always a tragedy, but it seems the death of a child is …
Amy Adams’ (Julie & Julia) new movie, Leap Year, wasn’t even on my radar until I caught the preview while watching Nothing But Trailers on HDNet while I was languishing at home with some sort of Satanic flu-cold-sinus disease that thoroughly jacked up my post-holiday vacation. Honestly, even after watching the trailer it still wasn’t on my movies-to-see list and I figured it was coming out in February. It looked like that kind of movie. I don’t remember much after …
Robert Downey Jr. has become a force of nature. Once just a great actor, the dude has seen his career resuscitated into the open arms of an adoring public who now sees him as their cinematic best friend to giddily bury under spade fulls of lavish praise. If there’s any doubt Downey Jr.’s charm and dynamism will single-handedly open Sherlock Holmes to fat gobs of cash while allowing director Guy Ritchie a leg up and out of his London Gangster …