The Holdovers (2023)
Directed by Alexander Payne
There’s more than a hint of Scrooge in this tale of characters marooned over Christmas at an exclusive New England boarding school.
Read morePosts tagged ‘America’
Sep 19
Somewhere in Queens (2022)
Directed by Ray Romano
“Somewhere in Queens” is a touching drama-comedy about existential fear.
Leo Russo (Ray Romano, who also directed and co-wrote the movie) leads a humdrum existence with his cancer-survivor wife Angie (Laurie Metcalf) and withdrawn son Matt “Sticks” (Jacob Ward). Working for the family construction firm, Leo plays second fiddle not only to his pop (Tony Lo Bianco) but to his brother, nephews and just about everyone else in the business. Only through his son does Leo earn a kind of respect.
Read moreMother! (2017)
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Middle-aged, unnamed poet (Javier Bardem) and his equally nameless, half-his-age wife (Jennifer Lawrence) inhabit a huge rural home that’s just the wrong side of creepy. He struggles ineffectually with writer’s block while she puts all her efforts into fixing-up the house where – it is more than hinted – his previous family was wiped out in a property-gutting conflagration. Read more
The Reach (2014)
Directed by Jean-Baptiste Léonetti
“He’s paying a thousand dollars a day” says the sheriff (Ronny Cox) of the small Mojave Desert town to Ben (Jeremy Irvine), a sad, serious tracker who’s just said goodbye to his off-to-college girlfriend. Read more
The Judge (2014)
Directed by David Dobkin
Hot-shot criminal lawyer Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) leaves his Chicago law-practice, his long-suffering, newly-unfaithful wife, and his sweetly precocious daughter (Emma Tremblay) to return to his family home in small town Indiana for his mother’s funeral. Read more
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Directed by: Anthony Russo and Joe Russo
Continuing the story of the 95lb weakling who wished he was a 240lb hero, The Winter Soldier gives the good captain (Chris Evans) another semi-solo outing from his Avengers home. Read more
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Directed by Bryan Singer
Like a 1970s fun-fair, X-Men: Days of Future Past comes lumbering into town, on to our screens and off pretty quickly, too, or there’s no justice.
The plot is both convoluted and simple: things are bad for the X-Men in the future, with a repressive regime soldiered by large flying robots called Sentinels hunting them down in their mountain-top hideaways. The only chance to get out of this predicament is to send the Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back to 1973 where he can get the younger versions of the X-Men to prevent naughty mutant Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from assassinating small, slightly evil scientist Dr. Trask (Peter Dinklage, looking serious but never scary) to prevent him from perfecting said Sentinels. Read more
Dec 28
Bad Santa (2003)
Directed by: Terry Zwigoff
Starring Billy Bob Thornton, and produced by, amongst others, Harvey Weinstein, and Joel and Ethan Coen – with all that talent, the real Christmas miracle on display here is that Bad Santa is so bad. It veers between sentimental comedy and feel-bad film, with TV-movie lighting (its colour-palette spans the pastel-pink to muddy-brown gamut of the shopping-mall world in which it is set) and, sadly, generally weak acting. Read more
