Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
After waiting for a movie for almost 50 years, can it ever live up to expectations? In the case of the film adaptation of Judy Blume’s classic 1970 coming of age novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, the answer is a resounding yes.
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The writing/directing team of actor John Francis Daley (who played Sweets in the long-running and slightly addictive Bones) and Jonathan Goldstein made their directorial debut three years ago with the poorly received Vacation remake. They fared better with two pictures they wrote but didn’t direct: Horrible Bosses (2011) and Horrible Bosses 2 (2014); this reviewer isn’t at all embarrassed to admit that she laughed so hard during the first Horrible Bosses that she nearly hyperventilated. With Game Night, the team’s second feature directing project, Daley and Goldstein do the opposite, though, and only direct, leaving the script to screenwriter Mark Perez. That may explain why this film, which also similarly stars affable everyman Jason Bateman, doesn’t reach the comedic heights of those prior two films. But this new collaboration has resulted in a pleasant and highly amusing comedy with a sensational cast, and it yields enough genuine laughs to recommend it.
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Marvel movies have been around so long, they’ve transitioned from feeling like momentous events to being like episodes of a very expensively made television series. We see the same characters interacting with each other in different ways, with plot threads being left open for the next film to pick up on. The newest movie from the series, Doctor Strange, breaks this pattern and creates an entirely new set of characters set in both the universe we’ve seen and ones we haven’t yet seen. Continue reading “Film Review: Doctor Strange”
Spinning Platters film critics Carrie Kahn and Chad Liffmann each share their ten favorite films of 2015. Here is Carrie’s list, presented in alphabetical order. (And you can find Chad’s here.)
The immigrant experience in America is exquisitely captured in director John Crowley’s finely crafted film about love, loss, and longing in 1950s Brooklyn. Based on the novel by Colm Tóibín, Nick Hornby’s screenplay presents us with the intrepid young Irish woman Eilis, who leaves her family in the Irish countryside for adventure and opportunity in New York. Saoirse Ronan suberbly conveys Eilis’s gradual shift from shy newcomer to confident cosmopolitan. Called back home for a family emergency, Eilis must choose between familiar comforts and new possibilities, and Ronan depicts Eilis’s struggle with heartrending openness and aching honesty. Emory Cohen and Domhnall Gleeson, as competing suitors on opposite sides of the Atlantic, also deliver strong, sharply drawn performances.
Continue reading “Film Feature: Carrie’s Top 10 Films of 2015”
Writer/director Tom McCarthy is perhaps best known for his character-driven films like The Station Agent, The Visitor, and Up. With his new film Spotlight, though, McCarthy stresses the story itself, yet his film proves just as successful – if not actually more so – than his earlier pictures that favored rich character development. Indeed, not since 1976’s All the President’s Men has a film so deftly and engagingly captured the heart-pounding excitement of intrepid reporters uncovering a major story of enormous national significance.
Southpaw was not what I expected. I believed and hoped that I was walking into a Rocky type fable, or maybe a modern day Raging Bull. There have been a few strong entries into the sport fighting genre in recent years, including Rocky Balboa (2006), Warrior (2011), and hopefully the upcoming Creed (2015). Sure, there are twice as many sub-par entries between the aforementioned titles, but with a superb cast headlined by limitless Jake Gyllenhaal and under the consistently solid (if not above average) direction of Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equalizer), Southpaw seemed destined to be the strong sports drama entry that comes along every handful of years. Alas, it is not. The sure bets going into the final product still shine—Gyllenhaal is superb and Fuqua’s direction is effective—but the story is formulaic and surprisingly, subtly, unnervingly, kinda racist.
starring: Channing Tatum, Rachel McAdams, Jessica Lange, Sam Neill, Scott Speedman, Wendy Crewson
written by: Jason Katims, Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein, and Michael Sucsy
directed by: Michael Sucsy
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for an accident scene, sexual content, partial nudity and some language
starring: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates, Carla Bruni, Adrien Brody, Tom Hiddleston, Alison Pill
written and directed by: Woody Allen
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for some sexual references and smoking.
