‘3 Stars’ Archives
The Messenger
This is an atypical war movie, where the soldiers are not actually at war, they instead have an emotionally tough job: notify the family of deceased soldiers. Foster and Harrelson are great in this movie, they are dealing with lots of emotions and sometimes it's just too much for them (and for us). Their relationship starts awkward, but soon [...]
Precious
This movie is very hard to watch. That's the main thing to know about this movie. The way Precious is treated by her mother is just appalling, I just don't understand how can some mothers treat their own flesh and blood that way. It's a miracle that Precious is not even worse than she is, especially at the beginning of the story. She is [...]
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths
As a fan of the Justice League animated series, I was very happy to learn about this DVD movie. Even though the animation is slightly different, and the voices are different, this still has a similar feeling to that series. The story is a typical alternate universe story that we can find in many DC stories. Our Justice League is pit against the [...]
The Blind Side
After receiving an Oscar nomination for best movie as well as best actress, I had to check out this movie. After watching it, I can see why it was nominated. It's a feel good story about family and poverty, and it's also tied to American's favorite sport: football. It's about the story of a white rich family who adopts a poor African-American [...]
Grease
After watching Glee, I discovered that my wife had never watched Grease, so I decide to watch this classic with her. I obviously watched it before, I knew most of the famous songs, but I have a hard time remembering when I watched it. I don't think it was in Italy, they usually translate all the songs in Italian. Anyway, watching it again it [...]
Avatar
After almost 3 years, I went back to watching a movie in a movie theater, and what better movie than Avatar? It's definitely worth it, since we won't have 3D TVs for a while, at least at an affordable price. I pretty much knew what I was getting before I watched it. It's a cool looking movie with great effects, but a lame or unoriginal story. I [...]
A Serious Man
This latest Cohen brothers movie leans more towards their black comedy sensitivities than crime. In fact, this story is so bleak that it's hard to watch at times. I can definitely see the comedy in this bleakness, but it's not laugh-out-loud funny, it's more of an ironic comedy. Basically everything that can go wrong with poor Larry, does go [...]
The Hangover
After this movie won the Golden Globes for best comedy I had to check it out. I have to say I do like it. This is a comedy with a clever plot, as opposed to comedies with a funny concept that are just a series of sketches. Here it is in a nutshell: a group of friends go to Las Vegas for a bachelor party, but the morning after they wake up [...]
Funny People
After watching two TV series by Apatow, it made sense to watch his latest movie. Funny People is clearly an Apatow movie: funny but poignant. It's not a series of jokes for the sake of making you laugh. It's a story about a down to earth character that makes jokes for a living. So there are plenty of opportunities to makes us laugh, but there's [...]
Invictus
Here's another movie about South Africa, this time more realistic than District 9. It stars Nelson Mandela and tells his role in the 1995 rugby world cup won by South Africa. It doesn't deal with all other political problems Mandela dealt with, at least not extensively. It instead focuses on the role that rugby had in trying to unite the new [...]
District 9
This sci-fi movie is an action/horror story with clear social themes of racism. The aliens are clearly discriminated against due to their look. But this is not even a subtext, since it takes place in South Africa. Even though the politics are the basis for the premise of this story, this is mainly an action movie. The first part is all setup, [...]
An Education
This story takes place in the 60's in London and it's mainly about the role of women in society. Jenny is a 16 year old girl who must choose whether to continue her studies (possibly in Oxford) or get married to a slightly older rich man. At first I was confused as to why a 20-30 year old man dating a 16 year old girl wouldn't be considered [...]
Sugar
This movie has popped up in some of the best of 09 lists and I can see why. It's very well made and presents an aspect of baseball that most people don't know about. I certainly didn't, though I'm not a fan of baseball to begin with. Sugar is a Dominican young man who is chosen to go to US and play baseball. He starts in a minor league, but [...]
Michael Jackson’s This is It
This documentary contains the rehearsals of MJ's concert he was preparing, right before he died. This is not only the last footage of MJ on stage, it's also a nice behind the scenes of a big concert production. It appears that this concert was going to be about all MJ's past hits, not just the new stuff. So this would have been great for his [...]
Taken
This is a fast paced action/thriller starring Liam Neeson, who is retired CIA agent Bryan Mills, whose daughter is kidnapped during a trip in Europe. At the beginning we meet the characters in a very awkward way, exposition is painful and feels forced. They ram the fact that his ex-wife hates him, but she and her daughter also think that he's [...]
UP
I came into UP with high expectations, not only due to previous Pixar movies, but also reading the praise from all critics. This time, my expectations were just a bit too high. This is a great movie, I especially loved the first 20 minutes. Everybody's talked about the montage, chronicling the couple's whole life together. And it was a great [...]
The Hurt Locker
This is one of the critically acclaimed drama of the year, and I can see why people like it. I do like it too, though it didn't blow my mind like others. At the center of the movie is the bomb squad working in Iraq. It was nice to see how this squad works on a day to day basis. The depiction seems fairly realistic, the characters were inspired [...]
Broken Embraces
Pedro Almodovar is always an interesting filmmaker, but when he teams up with Penelope Cruz he seems especially inspired. That said, their latest collaboration felt a bit more standard than usual. Amusingly this movie starts with a sex scene, almost as if Almodovar had to reach his usual sex quota and just stuck one at the beginning. Then it [...]
Star Trek
I'm in the middle of watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, so it's appropriate that I watch the newest incarnation of the franchise. I have to say I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. It felt very refreshing to have the original characters re-cast as young characters, but at the same time there's still a link to the past, in the person of "our" [...]
Duplicity
This is a nice spy-thriller/romance movie, light but at the same time clever. The two leads are very charismatic ones, so I think they did a good job in casting this movie. The spy plot is very interesting and has many twists and turns. First we think that Ray (Clive Owen) and Claire (Julia Roberts) meet by chance a few years after their first [...]