Drama Rated R
"…quiet, unassuming and honest about the very difficult decision of putting your spiritual principles before your physical life."
The main accomplishment of The King’s Speech is that it takes Grade A Oscar fodder – the true story of England’s King George VI and his struggle to overcome a speech impediment – and makes it not only tolerable, but enjoyable. It’s a shock that it took the Oscarmongers at The Weinstein Company this long
“…depicts the bittersweet birth of musical genius.
Drama Rated NR
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a book made for the movies, yet Francois Truffaut failed it. Intellectual science fiction isn’t the French New Wave director’s milieu, of course, so maybe the project was doomed from the start. Even so, the movie is awkward, stilted and sabotaged by Oskar Werner’s bizarre lead performance (Julie Christie, in
One of those books at whose feet the movies should cower, Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” is too astute, too well-observed and to sure of its own voice to ever be sufficiently translated to the screen. Even so, this stuffy effort by director Robert Mulligan is a disappointment. So much of the novel’s reckless
“Coppola manages to capture the unique bond – the precious, platonic romance – that can exist between girls and their dads.
Drama Rated PG-13
"Because it tackles a big topic and has been made by an important director, critics have positioned this as a defining film. It’s not."
You never quite believe the romance – if you can call it that – between Ben Stiller’s abusive, narcissistic New Yorker and Greta Gerwig’s dim, sweet, flake of a Los Angeles personal assistant in this feature from writer-director Noah Baumbach. Yet the movie still works. Baumbach has established himself as an accredited miseryologist (The Squid
"…a handsome, dutiful adaptation, yet like so many reverent movies based on acclaimed books, it’s lifeless."
“…bloated, obvious and – most damningly – immediately irrelevant.
