While director Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad lets us know that it’s “inspired by a true story,” it becomes clear early on that it’s much more interested in the artifice of crime films rather than the hardboiled facts. To be sure, it’s a good-looking movie as the clothes, cars and locations all look of the post-WW […]
Movies
Posted inArts & Culture
Linings Cooper, Lawrence shine
Pat Jr. (Bradley Cooper) has a lot on his mind. His mother Delores (Jacki Weaver) has just sprung him from a mental institution after an eight-month stay. Seems, at home he had walked in on his wife Nikki (Brea Bee) and a co-worker taking a shower and nearly beat the guy to death. Well, can […]
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Acts of kindness buoy a harrowing Impossible
Director Juan Antonio Bayona puts us through the wringer with The Impossible, a harrowing film recounting one family’s improbable survival of the 2004 tsunami that occurred in the Indian Ocean. Employing cutting-edge special effects and an unflinching approach toward recreating the severity of the disaster which claimed an estimated 230,000 lives and displaced 1.7 million […]
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Land doesn’t fulfill promise
While there’s never any doubt that Gus Van Sant’s Promised Land was made with the best of intentions, something goes slightly awry in the execution of this environmental awareness movie. Working from a screenplay by Matt Damon and John Krasinski (The Office), which was based on a story by Dave Eggers, the film sets out […]
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Cruise at home in Reacher
In light of recent events, it’s rather difficult watching the opening of Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher as a sniper picks off five innocent victims from a distance. I wouldn’t say the scene is done in a casual or callous way. At least until our collective sense of denial kicks in or memory fades, the lens […]
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Wreck-it Ralph’s clever odyssey
My father always used to say that he hated taking us to Disney animated films, yet I remember him being the one who laughed the most at what was happening on the screen. Of course, that’s the secret where making a full-length cartoon is concerned – you need to appeal not only to the kids […]
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Hitchcock too fractured
Much like the bathroom at the Bates Motel where Marion Crane met her untimely death, Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock is a bit of a mess. Attempting to tell the story about the making of one of the most notorious films of all time, while psychoanalyzing its director, is an intriguing story on paper. Not so in […]
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Softly a metaphor for our times
More like The Sopranos in tone and feel than Pulp Fiction, what with its lack of self-aware irony, Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly has more than a few axes to grind. Intent on throwing the last two administrations under the bus for their causing and mishandling of the 2008 economic collapse, the writer/director uses the […]
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Fantastic flicks
The Route 66 International Film Festival presents some of the best independent films from around the world. Submissions are reeled in from every continent except Antarctica and many are nominated for Academy Awards. The festival’s new home at The Legacy Theatre proves to be a perfect fit. Friday, Nov. 2, kicks off the two-day fest […]
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Reel foreign
Springfield area cinephiles benefit as the Route 66 Film Festival and the Springfield Art Association’s Film Series grow in size and quality. The 2009 Route 66 Fest, held last September, tripled its 2008 attendance while the SAA’s 2010 Film Series features one of its best lineups yet. Seven acclaimed films are en route to local […]
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Q&A with Goodbye Solo director Ramin Bahrani
2009 was a good year for director Ramin Bahrani. The 34-year-old was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and watched as critics continued to laud Chop Shop (2007) and Goodbye Solo (2008). Not only has Roger Ebert dubbed Bahrani the “new great American director,” but the critic ranked Chop Shop the sixth best film of the […]
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An independent obsession
Molly Schlich knows movies. She has organized the Springfield Art Association’s annual film festival for the past 18 years. The event, she says, was started not as a fundraiser, but as a way to offer greater variety to Springfield’s movie audiences. “We thought we could add a little more culture and a little more choice,” […]
