Keyword: moviereview
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No year-end film has stirred up as much talk as Paramount’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” which looks at American greed and excesses. The three-hour film has earned $34 million since it opened Christmas Day, with supporters embracing its originality and daring, but some fretting that the film celebrates the self-obsessed lifestyle of convicted con man Jordan Belfort. In an interview with Variety, Leonardo DiCaprio, a producer and star of the pic, talked about the challenges and rewards of making a film that is “outside the box” in its subject matter and approach. Here are excerpts of the interview, with...
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Every once in a while Hollywood produces a film that is not only well acted but extremely well written. "American Hustle," loosely based on the Abscam sting operation of the 1970s, will certainly be in the running for best picture. Christian Bale plays Irving Rosenfeld, again based loosely on con man Melvin Weinberg, who pretends to be a front for a "sheik" (played by Michael Pena---a Hispanic playing an Arab itself is a source of some good lines) to entrap congressmen and other public officials including "Mayor Polito," a friend of Rosenfeld's again based somewhat on Camden mayor Angelo Erricheti....
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Some hate Disney and some might hate this film. I liked it.
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Many of us will gather our families around the TV this Christmas Eve to watch Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. The story behind the movie is well known, so I won’t bore you with reiterations of such. Capra based It’s A Wonderful Life on the short Christmas story, The Greatest Gift, by Philip Van Doren Stern. His adaption on the big screen of the ultimately undeniable importance and fragility of each and every one of our lives has become a gift to us in and of itself. But Capra’s real gift to us was his philosophy as a filmmaker....
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When I think of Christmas movies the first one that pops into my head is It's a Wonderful Life. Our kids loved it so much growing up that watching it over Christmas vacation (usually on Christmas eve) became an annual tradition. I love George Bailey, but my favorite character is George's guardian angel, Clarence, although Mr. Martini is a close second. I love his tender concern for George after he gets clobbered in Martini's bar by the husband of Zuzu's teacher. Most of the minor characters in the film are wonderful. George's parents, his brother Harry, Bert and Ernie, Violet,...
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I saw it last night in HFR 3D. Tickets were $16.75 per adult. The film quality reminded me of something in the late 60s/early 70s in 625-line PAL format, but better of course. I had never seen a HFR film before. Soundtrack was wonderful. The story was pretty universal; a mixture of themes found in Star Wars, John Carter, Thor, and Game of Thrones. There were some scenes that did make me jump. The barrel scene could have been cutdown a bit. I thought the movie had a conservative theme with the Government of Lake-town mirroring that of the Obama...
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In the male-dominated realm of Middle Earth, only a few female characters are given a chance to shine - notably Liv Tyler's elf maiden Arwen and Cate Blanchett's elf queen Galadriel in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. When adapting Tolkein's prequel "The Hobbit" into three films, Jackson worked with producers to create a new character not featured in the original book. Unlike Tyler and Blanchett's characters, the elf warrior Tauriel, played by Evangeline Lilly, is not high-born - she is a working class 'Silvan' elf, who guards the Elven kingdom.
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No wonder Mary Poppins needed a spoonful of sugar. The forthcoming Saving Mr. Banks is a dark film that tells the heart-breaking true story behind one of the great characters in children’s movie history. P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), the nanny’s formidable creator, is pitted against Walt Disney (Tom Hanks), who promised his daughters that he’d bring Poppins to the big screen. The thing is, that pledge goes against the author’s wishes. Saving Mr. Banks goes behind the scenes of the ferocious battle to make what was to become the famous 1964 musical adaptation. For 20 years, Travers refused to grant...
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The girl on fire is still burning bright! Lionsgate’s hotly anticipated sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire trounced the competition over its first weekend at the box office, pulling in an estimated $161.1 million. That gross handily beats the $152.5 million opening of The Hunger Games, which opened in March 2012, and it stands as the best November debut of all time ahead of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which bowed with $142.9 million in 2009. Catching Fire played to audiences in all four quadrants. Crowds over 25 and under 25 were evenly split, and although the film had more...
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The recently released film “Captain Phillips” is getting good reviews and a respectable box office. It is a film I won't be viewing. My reasons? Tom Hanks is a talented actor (that's someone who can memorize at least one paragraph of dialog written by another). Unfortunately, he is also another Hollywood Obama worshiper, albeit a relatively quiet one, who, along with Spielberg and several others, grasp the financial rewards for positive portrayals of the United States military. Projects such as "Saving Private Ryan", "Band of Brothers" and now this new one. How sadly hypocritical that these Hollywood types continue...
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Culture: Slavery's stain on American history cannot and should not be whitewashed. But neither should it be portrayed as worse than it was to serve a political agenda. And yet this is what Hollywood is doing with its slate of horror films about slavery and its legacy. "The Butler" — which claims to be "based on a true story" — opens with a stomach-turning scene of white cruelty. A boy picking cotton on a Georgia plantation watches his mother dragged off to a shack where she's raped by a white landowner, who not long after the assault coldly walks up...
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