Life in a Day

The premise of this documentary is both unique and ingenious. An open invitation was sent out for people from all over the world to film their lies on July 24, 2010. Thousands of people from all parts of the world sent in videos. The finished result is an incredible celebration of human life. Life in […]

Midnight in Paris

I know I’m a little late to the party, since this movie came out over a year ago, but I finally managed to catch up with it.  What a great little movie.  Owen Wilson plays a writer who finds his inspiration in Paris as he appears to travel back to the 1920’s every night and […]

The Artist

Is the Oscar Winning film of 2011 nothing more than a gimmick? Oh its a gimmick, to be sure, but that’s not all it is. It also happens to be a charming and captivating movie in its own right. Of course harkening back to the silent film era, it makes sense to set your film […]

Take Shelter

Take Shelter is the down-to-earth story about how a man deals with potentially portentous dreams about an apocalyptic storm.  As the dreams intensify, the main character Curtis tries to downplay them when discussing them with others like his wife, but also pays credence to them by preparing a heavy duty storm shelter.  But what this […]

In Time

In a world where money is gone and time is used as currency, the rich are now literally sucking the life from the poor. This is the premise of In Time, a dystopian film starring everyone’s favourite Backstreet Boy Justin Timberlake. And Olivia Wilde plays his mom. Yes, that is not a typo. The premise […]

We Bought A Zoo

I’m going to keep this one short.  We Bought a Zoo is a sweet and enjoyable movie.  In fact, its very enjoyable.  Yes, its about a family who buys a zoo, but really its about a family coping with the loss of their mom.  Its the emotional core of the movie, and though it does […]

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: the actionless spy movie. And that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it is left to deal with the real nitty gritty of intelligence work. Bad because it can come off as a little dull and monotonous at moments. I’ll be honest; it was hard for me […]

The Descendants

The Descendants is the tale of a man named Matt King who is involved in one of Hawaii’s biggest land deals, all while dealing with his wife being in a coma. There are two main stars of this film; George Clooney and Hawaii. Hawaii isn’t presented as the dream destination which we usually see in […]

Hugo

Hugo captivated audiences and Oscar voters this year, probably because of its nostalgic setting and its look into movie-making history. The story tells of Hugo (an orphan living in a Paris train station)’s quest to finish his father’s robot in order to receive one last message from him leads to a second storyline of an […]

Real Steel

There were a lot of jokes about Real Steel being the feature film version of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots when the trailers started appearing. But it basically is. Yet they’ve made games based on the rides at Disneyland too, so why not? Real Steel is set in a not-so-distant future and sees Hugh Jackman […]

Drive

Sometimes films don’t know exactly what they are or what they wish to be. Drive does not have that problem: the film knows exactly what it wants to be. Its a heist-gone-wrong movie which focuses on mood and tension as opposed to action and hijinks. And that mood and tension is played up to near […]

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

As background for this review, I have both read the book and seen the original Swedish film, so this is my third go around with this story. And I have to say that David Fincher`s adaptation is very faithful to its source material as well as being a huge step up from the Swedish version.  […]

The Ides of March

In Ides of March, Ryan Gosling plays a young, ambitious political aid high up on a democratic presidential primary race. His candidate is George Clooney’s Governor Morris. The movie starts off by giving us a backdoor look into the campaign and setting up the candidate as a man of ideals. This is some good stuff […]

Contagion

I have to say, the microbiologist in me loved this movie. Contagion feels like this is how things would very likely go down if such a deadly virus were ever to be released up the world. It felt very authentic, and I don’t mean just the science behind it, I mean the ways in which […]

The Adventures of Tintin

Spielberg’s first venture into animation is, well, a sight to see. He turns the Belgian comic character of Tintin into a full blown adventure film hero. This movie is a lot of fun and is also great to look at. Speilberg seems to be going back to his roots here, although working with a whole […]