‘Drama’ 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 [...]
Crazy Heart
Jeff Bridges is the reason to watch this movie. He's great as Bad Blake, an old country singer who's down on his luck, with alcohol problems. He encounters a shining light in his life, Jean and her son Buddy, who turn his life around. Although the story is nothing too original, it's the characterization and the performances that make this [...]
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 [...]
The Lovely Bones
This is a more personal movie from director Peter Jackson, it's more about characters than it is about big action and spectacle. That being said he's still using visual effects heavily, in this case to create the world in-between where Susie is stuck after she is murdered. I must admit I was more interested in what happens in the real world [...]
Nine
I recently watched Glee, and I've been pumped about musicals, but watching this movie reminded why I never liked them before. To me this is not a coherent story or character study. To me it's just a series of musical performances by many different actors that don't have a common thread, except for being inspired by Fellini. The music numbers [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
Me and You and Everyone We Know
This movie is closer to a piece of modern art than to a typical movie. It's about how we all have our language and way to express ourselves, but that's different than anybody else. So sometimes it's hard to connect with other people. There are many characters in this film, all having their own issues. But by the end of the film they all learn [...]
Up In The Air
This is the critical darling of the year that can be enjoyed by everybody. It's a light comedy that has plenty of drama and seems to have deeper meaning. It has great performances, a popular lead actor (Clooney), pretty women (both young and older). Just the perfect mix. At the heart of it it's about our connection to other people, the [...]
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 [...]
Julie & Julia
Here's another great performance by Meryl Streep, who portrays a non-fictional person Julia Child in Paris, in the 1950s. Her story is only half of the movie, the other half is about Julie Powell (Amy Adams) in present day, who writes a blog about Julia's cookbook. Even though the subject of this story is cooking, it didn't feel boring to me (I [...]
Timecrimes
In another list of best sci-fi movies, Timecrimes was paired with Primer as the best time travel movies. Timecrimes' approach is different though, it doesn't try to explain the time machine, it only cares about what happens to the time traveler. What happens in this story is that there is only one story line happening, however we see it [...]
Primer (re-watch)
While reading and discussing about a list of best sci-fi movies of the decade, I was reminded of one of the gems of this decade, one that I already reviewed here. But I've always wanted to re-watch it a second time and try to work out the timeline in Primer, with the help of a few links. SPOILERS WARNING!! This movie is all about the concept [...]
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
This is a drama about the life of Pippa Lee, how her mother was always high, how she left home and stayed with her aunt, how she met her husband etc... Her past is all done in flashbacks, while in the present she's dealing with her husband's health and a young man in her life. I usually like biographical movies, but this story just didn't [...]
High and Low
Akira Kurosawa is favorite director of mine, but I'm ashamed to admit that I have only watched 1/3 of his movies. Here's me trying to remedy that. High and Low is not a samurai movie, instead it is a contemporary crime story about the kidnapping of a boy. The first part is all about Toshiro Mifune's character struggling with his [...]
Serenity (re-watch)
And finally we get to one of my favorite movies of the last few years. I've reviewed this already, but after re-watching it I want to delve deeper into details. Also since it's been a few years already, I can spoil the story. Since this movie has to appeal to people who've never watched the show before, the prologue explains the history of [...]