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Conviction (2010): C
An amazing true-life tale told in mundanely conventional Hollywood fashion, Conviction charts Massachusetts native Betty Anne Waters’ (Hilary Swank) unerring 16-year crusade to free her brother Kenny (Sam Rockwell) from prison, where he was serving a life sentence for murder. The hook to director Tony Goldwyn’s film is that, in order to exonerate her troublemaking…
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Solitary Man (2009): C
Michael Douglas plays an old dog performing familiar tricks in Solitary Man, a rote saga about a 60-year-old playboy tumbling, fast and hard, toward change-of-heart epiphanies. Douglas is Ben, a New York car dealer mogul who, after learning that he may have a serious heart condition, embraces a carpe diem ethos by detonating his marriage…
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Restrepo (2010): B+
Sidestepping political debate for on-the-ground reality, Restrepo tags along with an army platoon as they travel in May 2007 to East Afghanistan’s treacherous Korengal Valley to secure the creation of a road that will provide greater transport of supplies to the mountainous region’s locales. Directed by Tim Hetherington and The Perfect Storm author Sebastian Junger,…
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Mao’s Last Dancer (2009): C-
Performing a clumsy historical-uplift routine, Mao’s Last Dancer recounts the true-life saga of Li Cunxin (Chi Cao), who in the ‘70s was forcibly trained by his native China’s communist regime to become a ballet dancer, and whose life was forever changed by an opportunity in 1981 to study dance for three months in Houston, Texas…
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Love Ranch (2010): C-
An inspired-by-true-events story about Reno, Nevada’s first legalized brothel that’s both dry and flaccid, Love Ranch is set in the titular den of iniquity but misguidedly focuses on a washed-up Argentinean pugilist named Bruza (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) who falls in love with his new manager, Ranch den mother Grace (Helen Mirren). Grace takes control of Bruza’s…
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Let it Rain (2008): C
A multicharacter saga incapable of rising above mere pleasantness, Let it Rain once again finds director/star Agnès Jaoui (Look at Me) teaming with Jean-Pierre Bacri on a dramedy fraught with socio-cultural frictions. Back in her rural hometown to speak at a political rally, domineering feminist author Agathe (Jaoui) reunites with unhappy sister Florence (Pascale Arbillot)…
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Frozen (2010): B-
A simple premise is hampered by nagging contrivances in Frozen, albeit not without also reaping considerably unnerving dividends. Trapped high above a snowy mountain on a ski lift that’s been shut down too soon, Dan (Kevin Zegers), his girlfriend Parker (Emma Bell), and his best friend Joe (Shawn Ashmore) are forced to confront the strained…
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Tamara Drewe (2010): C
Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd gets reconfigured into a toothless British countryside rom-com in Tamara Drewe. Based on Posy Simmonds’ graphic novel, Stephen Frears’ film pirouettes around the titular Drewe (Gemma Arterton), a former ugly duckling who returns home with a new nose, short shorts and a promiscuous libido, and promptly sets in…
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I’m Still Here (2010): B
Joaquin Phoenix ditches acting for a rap career in I’m Still Here, a faux-documentary helmed by brother-in-law Casey Affleck that critiques not only celebrity life and culture but those very clichéd critiques as well. In late 2008, Phoenix decides that acting has turned him into a “puppet,” and that true creative expression via hip-hop is…
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The Town (2010): B
Ben Affleck returns to Boston for The Town, his directorial follow-up to Gone Baby Gone, and in the process finds a way to mildly energize a script awash in crime-film clichés. In what amounts to a Heat-lite saga concerned only with the criminal side of the coin, Affleck stars as Doug MacRay, a thief in…
