The Big Year is the sort of vehicle that will cause critics and audiences alike equal difficulty in discerning why and how it ever got made in the first place (which is not necessarily a bad thing). An indie film in all but budget, stars, and well... 20th Century Fox, it's a slow, meandering "comedy" that isn't exactly funny, and doesn't offer much insight when it comes to what it thinks you ought … [Read more...]
It certainly is complicated, there's no doubt about it, but does it deliver anything worth bothering with? It's Complicated is the story, more or less, of Jane (Meryl Streep) and Jake (Alec Baldwin). Divorced for a decade, but finally somewhat amicable, the two will run into each other by way of one of their three children's college graduation. Meeting at the hotel bar, they make the most of … [Read more...]
The first thing you have to ask yourself is, “Do I want to hurt now, or do I want to hurt later.” That Shopgirl is a film which poses such a question is rather uninteresting really, but the fact that it poses the question while only sideways implying that the question applies to every relationship is an impressive textual delivery. Shopgirl, much like Lost in Translation, is the story of a … [Read more...]
