December 2010
13 posts
5 Things about The Town
1. It’s funny that the trailers of The Town make this seem like a movie about shades of gray: the bank robber who falls in love with his hostage, and the Boston town that tries to trap him into that life. When in reality, The Town is a movie of hard blacks and whites: the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad. Just because they don’t line up with the fact that robbers are usually...
My Favorite Movies of 2010
[Notable movies not seen because I can’t find a damn theater nearby that plays them: Blue Valentine, The King’s Speech, Somewhere] My favorite movies of the year. One quick reason to convince you why. Listed in ORDER. 1. The Social Network Because sometimes the gigantic blockbuster event movie is the best… 2. 127 Hours Because sometimes reality is stranger, crazier,...
5 Things about The Fighter
1. The story of The Fighter in the eyes of the public almost mirrors the story in The Fighter: a movie that everyone thought they’d seen a million times before emerges from the first screenings with the cream of the crop critics raving, placing it in Oscar - Best Picture discussions and moving the ticker enough to get discerning moviegoing fans out to the theater simply to see what all the...
Black Swan [movie reviews]
(I am breaking from my “5 Things” method of reviewing films to fully get out my feelings on this movie. So deal with it, and all my badly written transitions and lack of cohesion)
SPOILERS AHOY!!!
I hate starting out movie reviews with a simple statement, like “I loved…” or “I hated…” But I loved and hated Black Swan in about equal parts, and to...
On Supreme Court Justice William Brennan's...
In December 1972, a young atty named Ann Torregrossa - just a copule years out of Villanova Law School - and just a few weeks from giving birth - stood up to argue her first case before the Supreme Court. The novice public interest atty and her lawyer husband, Joe, represented a group of Philadelphia prisoners seeking a way to vote in the city’s mayoral election. The two had alternated...
5 Things about True Grit
1. If you had told me that True Grit would be one of the funnier, more exciting and watchable movies I’d seen in this prestige season, I flat out would not have believed you. Everything in the trailers made it seem plodding, deliberate, ponderous, slow, only reinforced by the way the Coens usually go about their business. I have no familiarity with the original John Wayne movie, nor the...
"What I've Learned" 30 Years Old Edition
The most valuable lesson my family ever taught me was that love is never unconditional. The realization that I did not have to love the people I was supposed to opened up the possibility that I could wholly love those who did deserve it…
My mom is my best friend. When she acts like a mother, it honestly confuses me…
Seeing movies by yourself is the greatest experience. It is the only...
What the hell happened?
I grew up as a basketball nutcase. I worshipped at the altar of Jordan, I collected bball cards, I played bball every day at our local rec center (I was pretty good. I was a Pippen-esque defender/rebounder/fundamentals guy with a deadly outside shot. The downfall of my game? No dribbling skills. This would become more dire as I grew older and realized that I had stopped growing, and everyone...
5 Things About Due Date
1. I can’t figure out if Todd Phillips is the answer to, or the predictable result of the Apatow/Ferrel comedy blitzkrieg we’ve witnessed in the past decade or so. The creator of comedies that are more “movies,” without losing the absurdity and toilet-level humor that makes a comedy into a modern R-comedy, his films often show up feeling less than complete, or lacking...
I Hear In My Mind..All This Music...
If you’ll excuse some navel gazing…
I finished my last concert of 2010 last night. I’m sitting here in a Starbucks tucked away in a corner of suburban Atlanta, about to hit the road again to go home for the holidays, to finally unplug and give myself a break from the constant noise of the day-to-day life of a full-time creative person. My “grind,” if you...
5 Things about The Kids Are All Right
I’m a little sick and on a lot of cold meds while watching this movie, so hopefully I can type in complete sentences…
1. On the one hand, The Kids Are All Right is a movie about real people: people who have real problems, and interact in real, messy and imperfect ways. On the other hand, it’s a movie about people in unrealistic situations, interacting in theatrical and...
5 Things about 127 Hours
Some mild spoilers…
1. Danny Boyle is a director that, for better or worse, has been labeled as an innovative, unique filmmaker in today’s cinematic landscape. Chalk that distinction up to his debut with his amazing, visceral Trainspotting, or the fact that the guy consistently picks a wide variety of interesting and off-the-beaten path topics to focus on. But in reality, he is a...