Les Misérables is notable for being the first of the few musicals I’ve seen on stage. As such, I was somewhat curious in seeing this new film adaptation directed by Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech). The film stars Hugh Jackman as ex-convict Jean Valjean, Russell Crowe as the determined Inspector Javert, Anne Hathaway as the…
Quentin Tarantino fully embraces his love of Spaghetti Westerns (with a Southern twist) with his latest film Django Unchained. The film stars Jamie Foxx as the title character, a slave who is freed and trained by a German bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). Together they set out to free Django’s wife Broomhilda…
It was less than a decade ago when Judd Apatow established himself as a comedy king. After producing mostly TV series during the 1990s and early 2000s, Apatow hit a one-two punch by producing Anchorman in 2004 and directing The 40 Year Old Virgin in 2005, both of which would go on to be big…
“I Mean to Beat You to Death and Drink Your Blood From a Boot.” Jack Reacher is an adaptation of the book One Shot by Lee Child and stars Tom Cruise in the title role. Since there are over a dozen Jack Reacher novels in publication, it can be assumed that this film is aiming…
Imagine you are a folk rock singer in the early 1970s, who is discovered in a Detroit bar and signed to record deal. You record a couple records and, even though the music is well-received, the records don’t sell and you are dropped from the label and forgotten about. Now imagine that over twenty years…
More than a decade after The Lord of the Rings first graced the screens, Peter Jackson returns to Middle Earth for the first of three films based on, J.R.R. Tokien’s Lord of the Rings predecessor, The Hobbit. While the original source novel is a relatively brief children’s story, in comparison to the latter books, Peter…
Samsara is not an easy film to describe. I guess you can call Samsara a documentary, even though it isn’t really about anything. I suppose my best description of the film would be “Avant Garde meets National Geographic.” It’s a film that you watch for the experience of watching it. There is nothing in the…
Six weeks into its release, I finally caught up with Cloud Atlas, the epic multi-story film directed by the collaboration of Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and Andy and Lana Wachowski (The Matrix). The film is based on the novel of the same name by David Mitchell and features a large ensemble cast that includes…
Skateboarder, turned filmmaker, Stacy Peralta (Dogtown and Z-Boys) directs this autobiographical documentary about the skateboard team Peralta formed and coached in the late 1970s, through the 1980s. The entire documentary is made up of talking head interviews with the main members of the Bones Brigade, interspersed with the archive footage of the team in their…
As you can guess from the title, Ping Pong is a documentary about the sport, also known as Table Tennis. More specifically, the film follows eight participants competing in the “World over 80s Table Tennis Championships” in China. The film is pretty much as straight-forward sports documentary, which first introduces each of the players one…
