Thor (Branagh, 2011)
True, I can't recall two consecutive minutes of the film where I was conscious of enjoying myself, but that doesn't mean I hated it. Really.
True, I can't recall two consecutive minutes of the film where I was conscious of enjoying myself, but that doesn't mean I hated it. Really.
Miss Gulag tries hard to balance the story of a beauty pageant in a Siberian prison for females with a broader examination of life in post-Soviet society.
The Grove: A Fight to Remember begins with, pretty much ends with, and is interspersed with tourists in Golden Gate Park looking for the Japanese tea garden.
"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."
Susan Saladoff's Hot Coffee is the documentary that Inside Job tried so hard to be, informative, educational about a complex subject without being reductive, partisan without being propaganda, and, ultimately, persuasive.
Less of an indictment of wind energy companies (though it is that to some degree), Laura Israel's documentary is mostly an affirmation of the democratic process.
The key to Hey Boo's success lies in director Mary Murphy's ability to balance critique and appreciation, providing both historical and biographical context to explain the novel's importance and testimonials to attest to its timeless qualities.
UPDATE: A podcast on Soul Surfer at The Thin Place.
Julian Schnabel's latest film brings to the screen the autobiographical novel of Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal. Here is a link to my review at Christianity Today Movies and TV.
I can't quite shake the feeling that the world view that permeates this film genre is that life is an inherently miserable, humiliating experience...that the only joy in it is the supremacy and uniqueness of your particular misery. It's like a proud despair, almost as if the heroic stoicism of the modernists has crumbled and shown beneath it a sickly, pallid, postmodern gilded stoicism that doesn't fool anyone, least of all the people wearing it.