Coming hard on the heels of last year’s heralded The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, the mesmerizing 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days represents another outstanding offering from Romania, a country in the throes of a cinematic renaissance. The winner of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [...]
Entries from February 2008
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
February 15th, 2008 · Comments Off · Film Reviews
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The Spiderwick Chronicles
February 15th, 2008 · Comments Off · Film Reviews
This is an abridged version of a review I wrote for Christianity Today Movies. To read the rest of this review, click here.
There are two kinds of fantasy adventures — those that take place in another world (The Lord of the Rings, The Golden Compass), and those in which the fantasy world exists parallel to [...]
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Jumper
February 14th, 2008 · Comments Off · Film Reviews
Jumper is the worst kind of movie – a concept charged with stellar potential and a plumbless creative reservoir that instead squanders its promise on mediocrity and outright banality. Far more reprehensible than an uncomplicatedly bad film, Jumper is an unforgivably dim-witted and stupid waste of celluloid and your time.
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Christianity Today Movies Looks Back at 2007
February 11th, 2008 · Comments Off · Commentary
Christianity Today has come out with a two-part look at the best films 2007 had to offer. First it released its ten “most redeeming” films of the past year and on Friday it ran with its “The 2007 Critics’ Choice Awards.”
As a writer for Christianity Today Movies, I am happy to say that they are [...]
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In Bruges
February 8th, 2008 · Comments Off · Film Reviews
Against all established, conventional wisdom, In Bruges manages to be a blast of cinematic fresh air, a marriage of shocking violence and hilarious, dark comedy that takes the traditional British gangster movie and refashions it into something outrageously original. If Monty Python made a black, shoot-‘em-up satire, this is what it would look and sound [...]
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The Band’s Visit
February 8th, 2008 · Comments Off · Film Reviews
The Band’s Visit is a charming and tender meditation on loneliness and the essential need for human connection. Rife with comic irony, the film uses the Middle Eastern desertscapes of Israel as a vast, beige metaphor for personal isolation and emotional seclusion.
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Taxi to the Dark Side
February 8th, 2008 · Comments Off · Film Reviews
It is an interesting phenomenon, given this country’s war fatigue, that, while feature films focusing on the “War on Terror” bomb with both critics and the box-office, those documentaries brave enough to tackle the toxic topic are some of the most heralded films of the year.
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Fool’s Gold
February 8th, 2008 · Comments Off · Film Reviews
Fool’s Gold is the cinematic equivalent of going to the Caribbean for vacation. You won’t be visiting any great museums, taking in any palaces, marveling at any opulent cathedrals or doing much of anything to stretch your intellect. But you will come back with a nice tan.
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Persepolis
February 1st, 2008 · Comments Off · Film Reviews
The ancient city of Persepolis was once the gleaming capital of Persia. An extensive city comprised of colossal buildings, breathtaking palaces, and a bustling, enlightened populace, Persepolis was plundered and razed to the ground by Alexander the Great in 330 BC. The pride of Persian kings was forever wiped from the map. As invoked by [...]
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Over Her Dead Body
February 1st, 2008 · Comments Off · Film Reviews
Have romantic comedies so run out of ideas that they have to cherrypick other genres for new material? Hauntings and exorcisms aren’t usually the stuff of romantic comedies, but that is exactly what you get in the ridiculously flawed yet funny, Over Her Dead Body.
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