November 27th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Tom Sturridge, Rhys Darby, Nick Frost, Chris O’Dowd, Katherine Parkinson, Rhys Ifans, Kenneth Branagh, Jack Davenport
Director: Richard Curtis
Runtime: 135 Minutes
Distributor: Focus Features
Rating: R
Richard Curtis - the anti-Ken Loach of British cinema - is a hard guy not to like. Go on, try it. See, you cant. It’s just not possible. Sure, his movies and scripts continue to display a preoccupation with upper-middle class buffoonery, and yes, he perhaps has demonstrated something of a preoccupation with Hugh Grant’s floppy fringe. But in an age where its hip to be cynical there is something undeniably disarming about his rose-tinted view of encroaching middle-age, where real world responsibilities kind of melt away leaving plenty of time for harmless drug use, consequence-free tomfoolery, and inoffensive hell-raising.
Having made his name penning the scripts for such well received hits as Four Weddings and Notting Hill, Curtis takes his second crack at the directorial whip following the crowd-pleasing Love Actually. Loosely based on the Radio Caroline story, the name given to ships broadcasting from international waters in the mid sixties as a way around government regulations, Pirate Radio offers Curtis the opportunity to whip up an ode to counter-culture on the high seas indulging his two favorite subjects - awkward overgrown schoolboys lusting after posh totty, and music. Some might even say (harshly) that the story itself doesn’t matter and is simply an excuse to rock out to some great tunes. Radio Rock, as Philip Seymour Hoffman’s scruffy DJ, The Duke, duly announces, is “Where we count down to ecstasy and rock all day and all of the night!”; cue The Kinks “All Day and All of the Night.” But hey, who can argue?
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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October 25th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Rob Lowe, Louis C.K. Jeffrey Tambor, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill, Jason Bateman, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Director: Rickey Gervais and Matthew Robinson
Runtime: 100 Minutes
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Rating PG-13
While this broadly drawn rom com with added gimmick is far from the most inspired concept – its little more than a reverse Liar Liar and something that ten years ago would have surely been earmarked as a throwaway vehicle for Jim Carey – it does serve to highlight just how much a comedy script can benefit from being written with a specific comedian in mind. Set in a world identical to our own where no one ever lies, The Invention of Lying is tailor-made for Ricky Gervais, literally, with Gervais having purchased the concept from debutant Matthew Robinson before retooling it to suit his comic style and delivery.
So while the actor and material are in perfect sync, the flipside is that the move has been tailor-made for Ricky Gervais. So if that particular brand of embarrassment comedy leaves you cold, or the trademark unfinished sentences punctuated by that exasperated sigh drive you crazy, then don’t even bother. It’s also a film of two halves, but we’ll get to that later.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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October 16th, 2009 admin
2008
Starring: Hilmir Snær Guớnason, Margarét Vilhjálmsdóttir, Laufey Elìasdóttir, Ólafìa Hrönn Jónsdóttir
Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Runtime: 96 Minutes
Distributor: IFC Films
Rating: NR
Being recognized internationally as the best in a particular field that your country has to offer is certainly impressive. That said, director Baltasar Kormákur being hailed as the finest filmmaker in all of Iceland still feels a little bit like congratulating the world’s tallest midget. So while this sour Icelandic romantic comedy carries with it the prestige of having served as that countries official entry into the 2009 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Feature, it doesn’t necessarily indicate the same level of quality assured were that country say Brazil, or Korea.
Taking on the tiny island community of Flatley off the northern coast, White Night Wedding is a loose riff on Chekov’s Ivanov. With an added dash of quirk this is a bittersweet dramady that, as the title might suggest, takes in a chaotic 24 hours leading up to the ceremony during midsummer night when the Arctic sun never sets. In terms of an American reference, the overall tone of White Night Wedding could most accurately be compared to the films of indie helmer Noah Baumbach, with Kormákur mining great comedy out of such staples as guilt, familial resentment, and spousal insecurity.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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September 29th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Melanie Lynskey, Allan Havey, Tom Papa, Eddie Jemison
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Runtime: 108 Minutes
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Rating: R
Steven Soderbergh is not a director you would instinctively associate with comedy, having made his name with a low-key indie and then cemented it with a series of weighty, worthy dramas. Yes, he made the Ocean’s series, but those films were really more fun than they were funny. Similarly Matt Damon is an actor that outside of that series has gravitated towards roles that call for wounded intensity, with the likes of The Good Shepherd and The Bourne franchise. In fact on paper this farcical caricature of corporate whistleblower Mark Whitacre (Damon) is kind of bizarre blend of absurdity and banality you would normally expect to see delivered by the Coen Bros and starring John Tuturro.
This perhaps goes some way towards explaining that while the Informant! has great style and zips along at a fair old pace, propelled by a commanding performance from Damon, it never really hits its comic stride. Based on the tell-all book of the same title from author Kurt Eichenwald (not a comedy – the ! was something scripter Scott Burns added), The Informant! tells the story of the Lysine (a key additive in animal feed) Price Fixing Scandal, and the resulting three year FBI investigation that resulted in what was then a record amount in corporate fines. It was an investigation marred by the fact that their star witness, Whitacre, was in fact embezzling millions of dollars from the company while he was effectively working undercover for the Feds.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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September 24th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Matt Bush, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Reynolds
Director: Greg Mottola
Runtime: 107 Minutes
Distributor: Mirimax
Rating: R
Glancing at the premise for this retro, semi-autobiographical yarn from Superbad director Greg Mottola you would be forgiven for assuming that this is the first of many knock-offs taken from the current king of comedy, Judd Apatow, at the hands of his very own mini-me (sort of what happened to Eli Roth after he started banging around with QT). You would be mistaken. For while this does retain some of his mentor’s stoner sensibilities, it breaks free from the vein of crudeness and bromantic shackles that have come to define the Apatow brand, electing instead to keep things sweet and simple, a decision which ultimately serves this movie very well.
Ironically thanks in large parts to the aforementioned Apatow and the catapult that was Superbad, the shadow of Michael Cera looms large over indie starlet, and Mottola stand-in, Jesse Eisenberg; the ganglyness, the knowing deadpan delivery, and the comedic of the awkward pause. Comparisons are inevitable, but to be fair to Eisenberg, he did it first and he does it better.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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August 10th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina, Mary Lynn Rajskub
Director: Nora Ephron
Runtime: 123 Minutes
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Rating: PG-13
A prestigious triangle of heavyweight female talent combine to realize this impossible sounding screen amalgamation of two separate books, penned by two different women, spanning two continents, and separated by more than forty odd years. In addition to her directing duties, three-time Oscar nominated screenwriter Nora Ephron slices through the rich, flavorful prose with a carving knife, reducing the material to its very essence as the story of one woman greatly inspired who went on to inspire others. With a dash of Julie Powell’s titular 2004 book detailing her kitchen-based odyssey through Julia Child’s seminal cookbook and a healthy seasoning of Child’s own posthumously completed 2006 autobiography My Life in France, the result is a multi-generational comedy of spirit and determination that’s both hearty and heartfelt.
Superbly structured across the two contrasting eras, Ephron unfolds the modern day chapters with Amy Adams as Julia Powell, the mousey, put upon cubicle dweller manning a service helpline for Lower Manhattan Development Corporation in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Up to her eyes in human misery, patronized by her so-called girlfriends, and wholly adrift in her life, Powell’s only respite is cooking in her cramped Long Island City kitchen. Meanwhile, in early 1950’s Paris we find Julia Child (Meryl Streep) as the effervescent, somewhat bored wife of her Foreign Service officer husband Paul (Stanley Tucci). There her great love of food fuels the decision to enroll in culinary school and learn the secrets of French cuisine that she would later impart to an entire generation of American women through her landmark publication Mastering The Art of French Cooking.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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July 27th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Geoffrey Arend, Chloe Moretz, Matthew Gray Gubler, Clark Gregg
Director: Marc Webb
Runtime: 95 Minutes
Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Rating: PG-13
On the surface there would appear to be very little that’s fresh about this feature debut from music video director Marc Webb, who turned down a lot of offers of teen comedies to make his mark with this sweet indie rom-com. From the jumbled chronology of the story, to the sketchpad illustrations that serve to indicate which of the titular 500 days we’re currently observing, to the token precocious child, the ingredients of the colorfully quirky Sundance indie are all present and correct. Yet despite that there is enough charm and knowing detail in Michael Weber and Scott Neustadter’s script, backed by two irresistible performances from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel to potentially maneuver (500) Days of Summer into position as this year’s indie sensation.
As the comforting warble of the unnamed narrator (a fruit basket to Wes Anderson is sure to be on its way) informs us, this is indeed a story about boy-meets-girl – but it is not a love story. Rather it is a story about love, which is not necessarily the same thing. Disregarding the conventional arc, which would surely bring heart-wrenching break-ups right around the seventy-fifth minute and a mad dash to the airport five minutes before the end, this story opens after the relationship has already collapsed.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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July 24th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Tom Hollander, Peter Capaldi, Gina McKee, Chris Addison, James Gandolfini, Mimi Kennedy, Anna Chlumsky
Director: Amrando Iannucci
Runtime: 106 Minutes
Distributor: IFC Films
Rating: R
Though little known outside cult circles as a name and even less recognizable as a face, curiously named, diminutive Glaswegian Armando Iannucci has a decorated track record as the driving force behind some of the finest British comedy of the last fifteen years. Co-creator of faux news program The Day Today (think The Daily showed but played absolutely straight), Ianucci carved out a niche as a writer/producer of a string of hit projects that began to showcase a pattern – they were surreal, sarcastic and so clever as to be positively intimidating.
Latching onto the mock-doc sitcom style popularized by The Office, Iannucci developed a short run political series showcasing the absurdity of regional government titled The Thick of It (an update of Yes, Minister for the New Labour movement). Transposing that template to the raging sea of International politics, Iannucci’s riotously funny big screen adaptation candidly reveals that, while the stakes are higher, the games people play are just as familiar.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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July 2nd, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Jack Black, Michael Cera, Oliver Platt, David Cross, Juno Temple, Hank Azaria, June Diane Raphael
Director: Harold Ramis
Runtime: 97 Minutes
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Rating: PG-13
When it comes to comedy, the process really is ninety-nine percent perspiration. Airplane! for example went through an extensive screening process that saw Jim Abrahams and the Zucker Brothers relentlessly scrutinize the film, removing jokes that fell flat and re-inserting new ones, resulting in a film many consider the greatest comedy of all time. There are comedies that in the right hands become a labor of love, the effort and dedication poured into which would rival the most prestigious award’s picture. This is not one of those comedies.
The latest attempt by Harold Ramis (who typically deserves the benefit of the doubt) to club us over the head with the old funny bone relies on that other Hollywood adage – concept is king. The thing is though without serfs to do the grunt work (or in this case some jokes) the kingdom swiftly crumbles. Such is the case with Year One, which adopts a leisurely preamble through the early chapters of recorded civilization designed to illustrate the absurdity of blind faith in age-old religious dogma the origins of which we can only presume to understand.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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June 24th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Sam Mendes, John Krasinski, Maya Ruldolph, Alison Janney, Jeff Daniels, Catherine O’Hara, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Josh Hamilton
Director: Sam Mendes
Runtime: 98 Minutes
Distributor: Focus Features
Rating: R
Following the star-studded venomous marital spats that comprised much of his flatly on-the-nose adaptation of Richard Yates’ celebrated portrait of marital dysfunction, director Sam Mendes, no stranger to such themes by that point, felt he needed a change of pace. Fearing the great artistic death that is “habit forming”, Mendes chose to drift into the realm of Amerindie for what feels like elegant slumming in the wake of a string of high profile, high-minded commentary on the dark underbelly of various guises of Americana.
But while a cross country road trip of uncertainty undertaken by two expectant, unmarried thirty-somethings might seem an odd project to draw the attention of a married, forty-something Oscar winning filmmaker, who is lets not forget British, this is every bit a Mendes picture; a series of vignettes of increasingly bizarre and despairing dysfunction marbled with biting sardonic wit.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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