After sixteen years spent adapting and producing J.J. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy and The Hobbit for film, some of the most successful films ever, director Peter Jackson can think of just one thing. Doing nothing. He has reached the end of his sojourn with a flawless record of entertaining the fans in a phenomenally successful run. Jackson
Walk on the bland side in a comic book of biblical proportions The good thing about Ridley Scott’s latest special effects lollapalooza is going into it you know exactly what to expect. The story, rough as it is, is taken from the Bible so there are no spoilers to be had. From the opening battle
Starting off as a great military/industrial complex send-up, the story flounders in the home stretch when it grasps at the serious and ends up in slapstick. Talya Larvie’s military dramedy is fresh, untamed and funny. This is amazing, considering it shreds one of the top military organizations in the world. Featuring the women of mandatory
Canadian filmmaker Mark Raso bets on his audience in his terrific feature Copenhagen. It’s about an American called William (Game of Thrones Gethin Anthony) pretending to be Canadian while touring Europe. He tends to get into trouble a lot so he believes it adds another layer of fake “nice”. He is one of the most obnoxious male
Thanks to beautiful visual effects and the talents of Angelina Jolie, Disney’s ultimate villain has received a new a backstory worth telling – even if the movie has a few flaws in the telling of that story. The film delivers a new twist to the classic fairy tale and makes the audience understand why she
Laura Dern’s presence in Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild is ethereal and steeped in memory and love. She’s Bobbi, the late mother of Reese Witherspoon’s character Cheryl. Bobbi died young of cancer which tipped her daughter into drug addiction and years of bad decisions. One day Cheryl embarks on a thousand mile solo trek to come to terms with
A rich slice of hardship and redemption from the unforgiving frontier. The opening scenes are as bleak as death itself. Parched plains, patched together clapboard houses, poverty so deep it rises up to greet you at the front door, and wind that never, ever, lets up. Tommy Lee Jones’ second feature film shows an America
A tight knit and brutally honest essay on familial conflicts and the complications of living a Western dream in an environment of limited possibilities. Nine year old Junior is on the war path with his mother. What else is new? The ageless story of kid versus parent is told again, this time in the tough
A lean and mean essay on human bondage, a minimalist examination of living life to the least. Peter Sattler’s directorial debut is as bare and exposed as a prisoner in a cell. A stripped down film about warehousing human beings and waiting for the next step. The next step for the inmate is release, and
Screenwriting bromedy that shows Bollywood is not that much different than its American counterpart. Dulal is the brains and Mainak is the street smarts in Amit Masurkar’s flighty bromedy screened at the 9th Seattle South Asian Film Festival. Like most screenwriters, these two need that one big break to make it into the big time.