Woody Allen is at his best when he identifies a universal truth of love. In Annie Hall, it was the inevitability of separation. In Midnight in Paris, it was the desperate, idealistic longing for a time that never was. It’s because of this that Café Society never quite stumbles despite its meandering, clumsily delivered story. Cut through the fat and you’ll […]
Child 44
Cigar chain-smoker and all-around war hero Winston Churchill once mused, “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” While Child 44 isn’t quite that indecipherable, Churchill’s sentiments perfectly summarise the disjointed and fragmented adaptation of Tom Rob Smith’s U.S.S.R.-based novel. Director Daniel Espinosa fails to utilise the superb cinematic tools at hand—including […]
The Last Five Years
One of my close friends introduced me to Jason Robert Brown’s musical The Last Five Years when we were freshmen, and I’ve been listening to the original cast recording regularly ever since. I’ve never seen the stage production itself, and that added degree of separation gave me an uncanny feeling while watching writer-director Richard LaGravenese’s film adaptation. The film […]
The Theory of Everything
The “theory of everything” was the basis of world renowned English physicist Stephen Hawking’s first work in the 1960s. He believed there was one all-encompassing framework of physics that links together everything in the universe. While the “theory of everything” has yet to be proven – even Hawking himself has retracted his support for the premise – […]
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1
I didn’t know how to react to Mockingjay – Part 1. I remember feeling strangely ambivalent. I was entirely unmoved for the two hours I spent in the theater. After thinking about the film for a week or so, I realize that I felt cheated. This is because Mockingjay, Part 1 isn’t a movie; it’s a glorified advertisement for […]
Birdman with J and Søren
J’s Review Birdman comes close to greatness. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s execution of the long take is so successful it almost makes me forget about everything else in the film. I love how it moves from supposed fantasy to supposed reality without cuts, removing the objectivity that comes with a shot change. Watching fantasy elements shift into reality within a […]
London Film Festival 2014: Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s last film was the infamous, and largely banned, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. The controversial 1975 picture sees four Italian libertines in the last throngs of Mussolini’s fascist wartime regime. They kidnap eighteen youthful, attractive men and woman whom they sexually abuse and torment. The degraded youths meet a horrific demise as they’re branded, hanged and […]
The Boxtrolls
When the first trailer for The Boxtrolls came out, it seemed pretty progressive. The trailer touts the idea that parents come in all shapes, sizes and forms (and yes, sometimes boxes). It intimates that not all families include a mother and a father. I was excited. The Boxtrolls is based on Alan Snow’s kids novel, Here Be Monsters! It follows […]
The Signal
The Signal irritated me. I saw the film over three months ago, and time has not been kind to my impression of it. If I recall correctly, I left the theater this past June feeling slightly more positive than indifferent about this particular hodgepodge of sights and sounds. How things change. Here’s what I’ve learned in the last three […]
Lucy
“The average person uses 10% of their brain capacity. Imagine what she could do with 100%.” That was the tagline seen on the posters for Lucy. It’s useless harp on the fact that this ” 10%” theory is absolutely untrue. What matters is that this myth well-known and widespread, and so captured the imagination of Luc Besson’s potential audience. Unfortunately, […]
Magic in the Moonlight
Amidst his sardonic ramblings, protagonist Stanley (Colin Firth) proudly exclaims, “When the heart rules the head, disaster follows.” What an apt description of Magic in the Moonlight. Woody Allen’s latest is a study in inauthenticity. Stanley is a white man whose job it is to convince audiences he is an Asian mystic. In his spare time, he travels the […]
Boyhood
Two children stare through the window as their parents argue just outside. The yelling is muffled and indistinct; vague words phase in and out of earshot as adult voices rise and fall. This whole scene is an exercise in good filmmaking. Innocent faces watch curiously as their parents exchange heated emotion. The window blocks out the argument but allows the kids to see their […]
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes with J and Søren
J’s Review Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is not the “savior of the summer of 2014,” and I wonder if the people praising it as such have actually been to the theater in the past couple months. As long as we’re comparing, it has none of the visual sophistication of Godzilla and completely lacks the wit of Edge […]
Palo Alto
Artists fear an indifferent audience. But the middle of the road is also the most deplorable position for a critic to be in. It is far easier to shrewdly and bluntly tear a work apart based on its sheer lack of merit. Yet Palo Alto, from writer-director Gia Coppola, does have its merits. It simply fails to build […]
Kill Your Darlings
Destruction is necessary for creation. Art comes at a price. This is the lesson of debut director John Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings, which takes Faulkner’s philosophy of artistic ruthlessness to a murderous extreme. The title of Kill Your Darlings comes from a famous piece of writing advice from William Faulkner, advising writers to “kill your darlings,” to mercilessly […]
300: Rise of an Empire
Zack Snyder’s 300 moved me. The film has fallen prey to biting parody in recent years, but I knew then that 300 was one of the era’s great cinematic experiences. Movies like that demand to be seen on the big screen. Like both The Matrix and Gravity, 300 was a masterpiece of visual splendor. And it was […]
American Hustle
American Hustle opens with a balding, rotund, middle-aged man distastefully gluing a toupée to his head. You can taste the plaster fumes as little rivulets drip down his scalp. Then he takes his remaining strands of hair and pulls them over the furry piece now attached to his skin. The scene is uncomfortable, synthetic, difficult […]
Inside Llewyn Davis
Llewyn Davis is kind of a prick. He’s an immensely talented folk singer, but he’s selfish. He doesn’t seem to care about anyone but himself. Yet, I enjoyed spending time with Llewyn. In his own self-involved kind of way, his story rings true. We all know someone like him: a friend with all the potential […]
Austenland
Austenland is sort of the latest adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I say “sort of” because it’s actually based on Shannon Hale’s novel Austenland, which was inspired by the 1995 film version of Pride and Prejudice, which was itself adapted from Austen’s actual novel. After being dragged through a book, a movie, another book, […]
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
It has been a long time since Jim Carrey has been funny. For the past decade or so, the iconic 90s comedy superstar has been stretching the limits of his acting ability with critical darlings Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I Love You, Philip Morris. Meanwhile, films like Fun With Dick and Jane, while […]
Elza (Le bonheur d’Elza)
Directed and co-written by Mariette Monpierre, Elza (also known as Le bounheur d’Elza) is notable for being the first narrative film by a female Guadeloupean director. The film is a semi-autobiographical independent drama about a young French woman and her search to find her estranged father in Guadaloupe. However, despite the promise of a highly personal, beautifully shot […]
Promised Land
When I saw the first TV spots for Promised Land back in late November, I mostly ignored the actual content of the advertisement in favor of the text that ran right after the title. It looked like this: That list of names got me all hot and bothered. Notoriously hit-or-miss director Gus Van Sant (Good […]
The Big Picture
“You can hide from your past, but you can never erase it.” With that simple tagline, it becomes clear that The Big Picture is a movie we’ve seen before: a successful man does something unspeakable, and spends a good deal of time trying to bury his transgression. It is unfortunate that director Eric Lartigau, who […]
Looper
I feel it is only fair to warn you that there are very light spoilers for Looper in the review below. I have seen the movie and can assure you they are absolutely far from important given how complex the film is, but if you’re one of those people who wants to go into the movie completely fresh, I […]
Seven Psychopaths
The McDonagh family has some serious talent. Both Martin, the writer/director of In Bruges, and his brother John Michael McDonagh, writer/director of The Guard, have produced two of the best dark comedies of the 21st century. Martin in particular feels in many ways like a subtler, more poignant Tarantino, combining morbid violence with ingenious dialogue and meaningful emotion. […]
The Bourne Legacy with Mike and Søren
Here’s how our Dueling Reviews format works: each contributor writes an independent, abbreviated, spoiler-free review of the film. Then, the contributors come together in a podcast and discuss the movie in depth. Mike’s Review A week after I saw The Bourne Legacy, a friend called me up telling me that he was going to see it that […]
To Rome with Love
Coming off of his fourth Academy Award for the wonderful Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen attempts once again to catch that European lightning in a bottle with To Rome with Love. Unfortunately for him, comparisons to his last film are inevitable, making the fact that To Rome doesn’t measure up to the quality of the writing, story, dialogue, or […]
Another Earth
On paper, Brit Marling’s Another Earth has an intriguing premise revolving around the possibility of another Earth-like planet suddenly appearing in our sky. This planet is easily within communication distance to our own home world, and the possibilities for a high-concept, low-budget sci-fi film seem endless. Sadly, the film merely implies a lot of squandered potential, a […]
Mystery Team
I should start off this review by declaring my undying love for the comedy troupe that is Derrick. I have avidly followed all of their internet shorts, which are hysterical. I also caught, by chance, their impeccable last improv performance at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater in New York. As for their leader, Donald Glover, […]
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
I was very excited coming out of the movie theater when I saw the first Sherlock Holmes starring the nearly-always likable Robert Downey, Jr. (Holmes) and Jude Law (Watson). Sure, the movie suffered from a lack of plot direction and overall muddled storyline, but I very much enjoyed the style of the film. While it […]
Hugo
I must begin this review by dispelling one of the major misconceptions about this film: those of you who have been led to believe that Hugo is a “steampunk fantasy adventure” (as one friend described it) will be sorely disappointed. Hugo takes place almost exclusively inside a train station in Paris, France. Some amount of […]
The Dark Knight
I cannot tell you how sorrowfully my hopes were dashed when I first saw The Dark Knight in theaters. Unfortunately, Nolan refuses to realize both the limitations of an audience’s attention span, and how much plot one can squeeze into one film. Christopher Nolan created what, as disparate elements, are absolutely amazing components of a […]
Watchmen with Tim and Søren (Archive)
This is from the archives, back when Movie Fail was just two high school kids and a computer. In this segment, we review the movie Watchmen, directed by Zack Snyder and starring Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode. Tim’s Verdict: Movie Win Søren’s Verdict: Movie Win Score: 80% Note: This review is not indicative of the format of future […]
