At this year’s Ebertfest, the one film I was looking forward to more than any was The Spectacular Now, written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (500 Days of Summer) and directed by James Ponsoldt. It has been praised as the most realistic, teen/high school relationship movie you could ever expect to find, something that…
One of the toughest films to make is a dark comedy because it’s hard to flip between laughing and watching someone die, but if you need a good example, Bernie, directed by Richard Linklater and starring Jack Black, is the place to start. It’s a sleeper that sneaks up on you in a good way,…
During the first 12 minutes of Argo, someone put a belt around my chest and pulled it snugly. Then about every 15 minutes, it was pulled another notch tighter. Although I had trouble breathing, it was a good thing. Seven Oscar nominations later, it was a great thing. Argo begins with a short history lesson…
Occasionally, you might watch a movie that doesn’t really thrill you, and you wonder why it earned so much chatter. Then, hours or the next day later, you’re still thinking about it until finally a piece fits, then another, and then another. Then you start to understand. That’s what happened with Drive, directed by Nicolas…
Abraham Lincoln has been the focus of more book and movie titles than any other American president in history, and deservedly so even if you take away the tragic assassination. To sit in the chair that decides the future of an entire nation, knowing that half of that nation will not just hate you but…
Flight: Do a Barrel Roll! (Review) (via The Cinematic Katzenjammer) . Read my review posted on a fabulous website for movies, games, and more. A pilot, a drug addict, and a cancer patient walk into a stairwell. No, that’s not the beginning of a bad joke, but it is the beginning of a moment at…
If I told you that Sam (Jared Gilman), a man in uniform, was in love with Suzy (Kara Haywood), a woman who lived in a lighthouse on the edge of a New England island, and they were going to run away together until a hurricane approached, you would say, “Don’t we have enough crappy Nicolas…
In a continuing series in which I examine items from a list considered the mostest greatestest films of all time – The Third Man (1949) written by Graham Greene, directed by Carol Reed, and produced by David O. Selznick, this film floats in the middle of the AFI top 100 films. Anything that is anywhere on…
Too many films are set in Philadelphia and Boston, usually for the wrong reason. Both cities have passion and character, but they also have fairly noticeable speech patterns. I suspect some actors want to play characters from those cities only to make the audience say, “Wow, what a great (Boston or Philadelphia) accent!” After about…
“Everything will be all right in the end. So if it is not all right, it is not yet the end.” – Sonny. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (TBEMH) is one of those occasional films that remind us that you can have a very enjoyable movie without CGI, guns, explosions, and gratuitous (but fun) sex. It’s about…
brainsnorts inc. 