Cinemaniac Reviews

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Archive for the month “May, 2012”

29 May 2012
8 Comments

Flags of Our Fathers

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Bottom Line: More than just a war film…

“No sense being a hero if you don’t look like one.” –Jesse Bradford as Rene Gagnon

Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Adam Beach, Barry Pepper, Jamie Bell, Jesse Bradford, John Benjamin Hickey, John Slattery, Ryan Phillippe

Poignant drama chronicles the lives of the three men–John “Doc” Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach)–out of the six total who survived after raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi in 1945. The film follows their time during post-traumatic stress disorder, where we see flashbacks of the struggles at Iwo Jima during World War II, as they are reminded of these events by many of their everyday experiences. In an even more interesting sense, reverent historical document delves into the history of the famous photograph captured on Mount Suribachi, raising a few questions as to how accurate the photograph actually was.

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Posted in Drama, Epic, History, War, [Film Reviews] and tagged
28 May 2012
25 Comments

Dark Shadows

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Bottom Line: I vatched Dark Shadows and often vondered vhat had happened to the vonce-vonderful Burton and Depp.

“Fifteen, and no husband?  You must put those child-bearing hips to good use, lest your womb shrivel up and die.” –Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins

Directed by: Tim Burton
Starring: Bella Heathcoate, Chloe Grace Moretz, Eva Green, Gulliver McGrath, Helena Bonham Carter, Jackie Earle Haley, Johnny Depp, Jonny Lee Miller, Michelle Pfeiffer

Fang-tastical (but certainly not fang-tastic) horror comedy starts out around 1776 in Liverpool, England. Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) is a handsome man, happily married, when all of a sudden Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green), one of his past lovers whom he rejected, goes insane, killing both his parents as well as his wife, and transforming him into a vampire. Fast-forward to 1972. A town has been established named Collinsport, perhaps after Barnabas himself and his family. In the town resides some of his human relatives from generations later. Barnabas, having been imprisoned for quite a while now, returns to his relatives and their psychiatrist, most of whom are unaware he is an immortal vampire. The first to discover this insists on him keeping it a secret. Only to make things more difficult is Angelique, who comes to visit not too long after Barnabas.

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Posted in Comedy, Fantasy, Horror, [Film Reviews] and tagged
27 May 2012
15 Comments

Lost in Translation

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Bottom Line: Wonderful slice of life from a great filmmaking family.

“Is that everything? It seemed like he said quite a bit more than that.” –Bill Murray as Bob Harris

Directed by: Sofia Coppola
Starring: Akiko Takeshita, Anna Faris, Bill Murray, Catherine Lambert, Giovanni Ribisi, Scarlett Johansson

Quiet, somber drama about a movie star, 55-year-old Bob Harris (Bill Murray). Bob is taking a trip to Tokyo, Japan to shoot a whiskey commercial. In a parallel story, we are introduced to Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a 25-year-old woman, recently married, but her husband (Giovanni Ribisi) is neglecting her, constantly meeting with another sprightly blonde woman (Anna Faris) for dinner. The scarce likelihood of Bob, a bored, introverted man, meeting anyone who so much as speaks English, culminates in him meeting Charlotte, who is similar to him in several different ways, and forming an unlikely bond.

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Posted in Drama, [Film Reviews] and tagged
26 May 2012
10 Comments

The Jerk

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Bottom Line: All I need is this movie! And a couch! This movie and a couch! And some popcorn! Some popcorn, this movie, and a couch!

“For one dollar, I’ll guess you weight, your height, or your sex!” –Steve Martin as Navin R. Johnson

Directed by: Carl Reiner
Starring: Bernadette Peters, Bill Macy, Catlin Adams, M. Emmet Walsh, Renn Woods, Steve Martin

Hopelessly funny misadventure is a chronicle of Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin), who makes it clear to us within the first few lines of the film that he is NOT a bum, but a jerk. It’s quite difficult to believe he actually isn’t a bum when he says this sitting on a city sidewalk, dirty in the face, two homeless men sleeping next to him, and even more difficult to try and figure out why he would describe himself as a “jerk,” but for the time being, we go with it. Navin, a man who has apparently nothing left of his but his friends and his thermos, goes on to tell us his life’s story, from his early life singing on the front steps of his porch as a “poor black child” in Mississippi (somehow I doubt that), to his sudden skyrocketing from rags to riches as an inventor of an accessory to keep glasses from sliding off one’s face.

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Posted in Adventure, Comedy, [Film Reviews] and tagged
26 May 2012
8 Comments

Notes on a Scandal

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Bottom Line: Shocking, unpredictable, engaging.

“I hadn’t been pursued like this for years…I knew it was wrong, and immoral, and completely ridiculous, but, I don’t know.  I just allowed it to happen.” –Cate Blanchett as Sheba Hart

Directed by: Richard Eyre
Starring: Andrew Simpson, Bill Nighy, Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, Juno Temple, Max Lewis

Heavy, shocking thriller tells of two high school teachers, Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett) and Barbara Covett (Judi Dench). We recognize Mrs. Hart as a cheerful, young woman, happily married, and the mother of two children. She teaches quite leniently in the educational area. Ms. Covett, on the other hand, rules her classroom like “a battle axe,” as she describes herself, and outside, she is an older, chain-smoking woman whose only companion is her cat. The two women meet each other, and they become great friends for quite a while. Their friendship, however, begins to take a different route, one night at a school concert, where Ms. Covett witnesses Mrs. Hart having sex with Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson), one of her students. Rather than reporting this, Ms. Covett decides to assist Mrs. Hart in trying to not let this become a criminal case, but insists that the affair end.

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Posted in Drama, Thriller, [Film Reviews] and tagged
26 May 2012
17 Comments

The Godfather

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Bottom Line: You can’t refuse an offer to watch this classic crime epic.

“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” –Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Abe Vigoda, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Gianni Russo, James Caan, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, Talia Shire

Careful, elegant crime saga opens up by introducing Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando).  Set during the 1940s and 1950s, this elegant, careful crime saga is not slow to reveal that Vito is the Don–the boss–of a Sicilian Mafia family, where he is referred to as “Godfather”.  Everyone in his family has some connection to crime, and there are only two considerably innocent members of the family: his youngest son Michael (Al Pacino), who has recently returned from war and is the only college-educated member of the family.  Soon enough, a drug dealer attempts to assassinate Vito, landing him in the hospital and to potentially retiring.  As is traditional in a Sicilian Mafia family, his eldest son, “Sonny” Corleone (James Caan), begins preparing to replace Vito as the new Don.  Strangely, the majority of the film after this key point focuses on Michael Corleone, who we initially recognized as the only “good guy” in his family, but gradually begins to involve himself in crime.

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Posted in Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, [Film Reviews] and tagged
20 May 2012
26 Comments

Raging Bull

Bottom Line: Furious classic.

“You didn’t get me down, Ray.” –Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta

Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Cathy Moriarty, Frank Vincent, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro

Martin Scorsese is the motion picture industry’s equivalent to Ludwig van Beethoven. He’ll go as definitively superlative as he can with a production as far as the fashion in which the mood and emotion are presented, as long as in the end it all threads together seamlessly. RAGING BULL is the perfectionistic example of how Scorsese puts his successful style to work. This is the biographical story of Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro), a middleweight boxer known by his nickname “Raging Bull” in the 1940s and 1950s. This cinematic splendour of a film is a well-acted record of this segment of his life, in which he struggles with his outrageous temper that is raising him to the pinnacle of his career, but is bringing him to an emotionally self-destructive state outside the ring.

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Posted in Biography, Drama, Sports, [Film Reviews] and tagged
19 May 2012
18 Comments

Life Is Beautiful

Bottom Line: Life may be beautiful, but this film sure isn’t.

“Buon giorno, principessa!” –Roberto Benigni as Guido Orefice

Directed by: Roberto Benigni
Starring: Giorgio Cantarini, Giustino Durano, Horst Bucholz, Marisa Paredes, Nicoletta Braschi, Roberto Benigni, Sergio Bustric

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL concerns a Jewish Italian man, Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni), and his wife, Dora (Nicoletta Braschi). The two have always lived in happiness, ever since they met each other. Guido is a character who has a fondness for charming humor: he used it to convince Dora to take him as a husband, and he has used it in every day of their marriage to brighten her days. Fast-forward a few years, to the point where the two have a son, who is around three or four years old. The Holocaust has risen and the two have been sent to a Nazi concentration camp. Guido now tries everything he can to protect his innocent son from being murdered in the Holocaust.

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Posted in Comedy, Drama, Romance, [Film Reviews] and tagged
19 May 2012
5 Comments

The Iron Lady

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Bottom Line: The Iron Lady has a great performance by Meryl Streep, but that’s about it.

“It used to be about trying to do something. Now it is about trying to be someone.” –Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher

Directed by: Phyllida Lloyd
Starring: Alexandra Roach, Jim Broadbent, Meryl Streep, Richard E. Grant, Susan Brown

Rarely do I ever watch a biographical film to learn more about a figure with whom I am already familiar. In fact, it’s rare for me to watch such a film for learning purposes. But it often happens, anyway. My purpose for watching biopics is to be entertained; I treat them as most other films. Often times, I don’t have the slightest idea who the central subject of the film I am watching is. LA VIE EN ROSE and J. EDGAR are just two examples of many films that I have watched, unaware of what to expect. THE IRON LADY was only a slightly different case. The film revolves around Margaret Thatcher, a woman I knew, prior to watching this, as the first female Prime Minister of Great Britain and a well-hated woman.

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Posted in Biography, Drama, [Film Reviews] and tagged
12 May 2012

Freakonomics

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Bottom Line: “Interesting” may be the best word to describe this one.

Directed by: Alex Gibney, Eugene Jarecki, Heidi Ewing, Morgan Spurlock, Rachel Grady, Seth Gordon
Other Credits: Melvin van Peebles, Stephen J. Dubner, Steven D. Levitt

Intriguing documentary covers some important issues around the world today, with inspiration from the nonfictional 2005 work of the same name by economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner. This is the pairing of six directors: Heidi Ewing, Alex Gibney, Seth Gordon, Rachel Grady, Eugene Jarecki, and Morgan Spurlock. It’s up to your personality to determine which segments will pique your interest. More cerebral and/or statistical segments, such as SUPER SIZE ME director Morgan Spurlock’s “A Roshanda by Any Other Name”, caught my attention. Other segments, such as Alex Gibney’s “Pure Corruption”, struck me as a bit shallow. Again, it’s all in who the viewer is that is watching, as some may very well think the opposite of what I did for these segments.

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Posted in Documentary, [Film Reviews] and tagged

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