By Matt Brunson
THAT EVENING SUN
***
DIRECTED BY Scott Teems
STARS Hal Holbrook, Ray McKinnon
Like the Jeff Bridges vehicle Crazy Heart (scheduled to open in Charlotte next week), That Evening Sun is one of those films that generates nearly all of its goodwill from a smashing central performance by a long-established veteran. Here, it’s Hal Holbrook who shows up to demonstrate to Hollywood’s young pups how it’s done. (more…)
By Matt Brunson
EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES
*1/2
DIRECTED BY Tom Vaughan
STARS Brendan Fraser, Harrison Ford
Had Harrison Ford spent as much time playing risk-taking actor as action hero, would he now have a mantel of awards to call his own? There was a time when the former box office behemoth would occasionally tackle a quirky character (e.g. The Mosquito Coast, Working Girl) amidst all those larger-than-life super-studs in guaranteed blockbusters, but that time is long gone, and the past decade-plus has mostly seen him wheezing away in ill-advised bombs like Firewall and K-19: The Widowmaker (the latter directed by current critical darling Kathryn Bigelow). Ford did have the opportunity to stretch when Steven Soderbergh offered him a key role in Traffic, but he inexplicably backed out and the part went to Michael Douglas instead. (more…)
By Matt Brunson
Like those Biblical epics of yore, 1977’s Kingdom of the Spiders is a motion picture that can boast of literally presenting a cast of thousands. In this case, though, that number applies to the hordes of spiders seen crawling all over the place — 5,000 seems to be the accepted figure, although a crew member in one of the extra features states that the number was anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000! At any rate, arachnophobes are advised to steer clear of any TV set showing this effective horror yarn, which managed to produce a handsome return on its half-million-dollar budget during a period when most moviegoers were busy re-watching Star Wars for the umpteenth time. (more…)
By Matt Brunson
THE LOVELY BONES
***
DIRECTED BY Peter Jackson
STARS Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg
We might as well begin with a disclosure: I haven’t read Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. And from what I’ve been able to ascertain, folks who did go buy the book are furious that the film version doesn’t go by the book, or at least not enough to stifle their cries of foul play. (more…)
By Matt Brunson
THE BOOK OF ELI
***
DIRECTED BY The Hughes Brothers
STARS Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman
Talk about apocalypse now. If there’s one positive thing to be said about the sudden glut of end-of-the-world tales, it’s that the batting average in terms of quality has been on the winning side. Certainly, 2012 was a stinker, but The Road, Zombieland, Terminator Salvation and now The Book of Eli have all been compelling watches, each for different reasons. (more…)
By Matt Brunson
A SINGLE MAN
***
DIRECTED BY Tom Ford
STARS Colin Firth, Julianne Moore
Famous fashion designer Tom Ford clearly tries too hard with his directorial debut, but I prefer his overreaching to the cookie-cutter approach displayed by cinematic neophytes merely aping their contemporaries. If nothing else, this adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s novel has a visual style that’s clearly its own, and while some of the mise-en-scenes smack of pretension, most are quite beautiful and serve the overall mood of the piece. (more…)
By Matt Brunson
BROKEN EMBRACES
**1/2
DIRECTED BY Pedro Almodovar
STARS Penelope Cruz, Lluis Homar
The muse is upon Pedro Almodovar — specifically, favorite leading lady Penelope Cruz, who has inspired the Oscar-winning auteur to cast her for the fourth time in a feature film. Here, she’s seen in the flashbacks of blind screenwriter Harry Caine (Lluis Homar), who reflects on his affair with the mistress of a powerful businessman (Jose Luis Gomez) and the series of events that first brought them together and then kept them apart. (more…)
THIS IS IT: Heath Ledger becomes the man in the mirror.
By Matt Brunson
THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS
**1/2
DIRECTED BY Terry Gilliam
STARS Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer
The late Henry Fonda had the good fortune of ending his distinguished film career with an Oscar-winning performance in the popular On Golden Pond, while, on the opposite end of the spectrum, both Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin found their mutual swan song to be the Hall of Shame turkey Cannonball Run II. Most stars, however, bow out in a less conspicuous manner via a film that’s neither exemplary nor execrable, and that’s certainly the case with Heath Ledger. (more…)
By Matt Brunson
THE 10 BEST (In Alphabetical Order)
1. FAR FROM HEAVEN (2002; Todd Haynes). It’s a little frightening to realize exactly what writer-director Todd Haynes has managed to pull off with this audacious endeavor. Channeling the spirit of filmmaker Douglas Sirk (Imitation of Life, All That Heaven Allows), he has replicated the look, the feel, the technique and the simmering subtext of those color-soaked melodramas from the 50s — and yet not once does his movie even remotely feel like a goofy gimmick, a high-minded stunt meant only to draw attention to its creator’s cleverness. As the happy homemaker whose life begins to unravel once her husband steps out of the closet and her black gardener steps into her affections, Julianne Moore delivers a heartbreaking performance that easily endures as one of the finest of the decade. (more…)
By Matt Brunson
THE 10 WORST (In Alphabetical Order)
1. ALONE IN THE DARK (2005). Most bad movies possess occasional lulls in their ineptness, brief moments salvaged by, say, a clever line of dialogue or an interesting character insight. This amateurish horror yarn defies that assumption, stumbling from one astonishingly awful sequence to the next until the viewer’s head feels like it will explode Scanners-style. Tara Reid portrays a brainy anthropologist, the most mind-boggling bit of miscasting since a Bond flick offered Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist. (more…)
