May 2010
5 posts
4 tags
Heartless (2009) review
Philip Ridley is an artist, writer, and “occasional” filmmaker (three features in 20 years, so he’s hardly making a living at it). The Reflecting Skin, his 1990 directorial debut, remains his best-known movie (few people remember The Passion of Darkly Noon, five years later), and among the cognoscenti, Heartless was eagerly anticipated.
Released several weeks ago on multiple...
4 tags
Robin Hood (2010) review
Dear Brian Helgeland: I know Robin Hood, I’ve seen Robin Hood, and your Robin Hood isn’t Robin Hood. Oh, the 2010 Robin Hood isn’t a bad film (too long by at least half an hour, but the last 20 minutes make up for a lot), but it could just as easily been titled Men of Valour or The Phantom Sword or A Knight’s Tale (oh, wait, Helgeland already used that one). ...
3 tags
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) review
Has it really been 26 years since the original A Nightmare on Elm Street was released? Damn…where did the ’80s…’90s…2000s go? Oh well, that’s not the point. The point is: did we really need a new version of that film?
Many literary properties have been adapted to the screen multiple times—“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,”...
4 tags
Iron Man 2 (2010) review
I was a “comic book kid” (a long time ago) but haven’t seen many of the superhero films released in recent years. Iron Man 2 was not high on my “to watch” list, since I’d missed the first one, but a free Friday night…meh…why not?
As it turned out, Iron Man 2 was also mildly “meh.” Too long (can’t anyone...
4 tags
Harry Brown (2009) review
Harry Brown is to Death Wish as Crazy Heart is to Tender Mercies and Avatar is to…a heck of a lot of other films. In other words, a film not so much scripted as cut-and-pasted by someone with a short attention span and a bookcase full of DVDs.
Comparisons have also been made between Gran Torino and Harry Brown, because both films deal with widowed senior citizens...
