When was the last time you left a movie theater feeling genuinely inspired? When was the last time you saw a movie which endorsed a better tomorrow without including a platitudinous caveat? When was the last time a movie didn’t make you regret letting your guard down, regret believing that happy endings are possible without […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Gravity” — “Intense is Not a Strong Enough Word for this Film”
It all started with Olmec from “Legends of the Hidden Temple.” Why a talking Mayan stone head was giving away trips to Space Camp didn’t matter. What did matter is that, every once in a while, some kid would put together the silver monkey and win that trip. How I hated those kids. (Not as […]
Dagger Movie Night: “The Descendants” – A Rare Mix of Comedy and Drama Gold
Click here to hear the audio version of Mark Elloff’s review of this movie. Picked up at the Telluride Film Festival, “The Descendants” is the rare mix of comedy and drama that is successful in both genres. The writing and cast gels perfectly, pushing the difficult subject matter into cinematic gold. From Alexander Payne, the […]
Movie Review: ‘The American’
(Giles Keyte/Focus) It requires careful skill to be an assassin: exemplary marksmanship, precision in movement, and certainty in intention. The same can be said of successful filmmaking, and even of convincing performance. It’s a good thing, then, that Focus Features’ The American, a meticulously crafted, retro-styled exercise in vigilance and meditation, subsists on those who […]
Burn After Reading: A Review Of The Latest Coen Brothers Film
After becoming the talk of Hollywood with their film masterpiece No Country For Old Men, Ethan and Joel Coen have become recognized by just about everyone these days. So when their new film, Burn After Reading, came out, everyone wondered if it would become another shining mark on the Coen brothers’ already impressive record, which […]
