New reviews up

New reviews hot off the presses - check them out by clicking here.

Review of Greenberg

Click here to read my review of Noah Baumbach's Greenberg.

Review of The Runaways

New of review of The Runaways can be found here.

My review of 9

Click here to read my review of 9.

Review of The Eclipse

You can read my review of The Eclipse here.

Hot Tub Time Machine Review

My review of Hot Tub Time Machine can be see here

Night on Earth Review

My review of Night on Earth can be read here!

Review of The Straight Story

You can read my review of The Straight Story here.

Review of Dead Snow

My review of Dead Snow can be read here.

Review of Into the Wild

You can read of Into the Wild here at my wordpress blog

New Review of The Wolfman

Here's my new review of The Wolfman at my new blog location

We're movin'

Hey folks, (not that anyone even reads this thing)

I've decided to move here Filmic Brevity is now at Wordpress. Simply put wordpress seems like a much better designed blogging site with more options and more ways to gauge traffic and audience. I'll keep this one around for links to the new blogs, but I'm pretty sure the move is official.

See you all there!

Filmic Brevity is now at Wordpress

Whip It - Tough Chicks

Whip It is Drew Barrymore's directorial debut. I had a really fun time with this one. Bliss (Ellen Page) is a girl that's forced into beauty pageants by her overbearing mom (the always amazing Marcia Gay Harden). She has a father (Daniel "voice of Kevin Arnold" Stern) who seems to be pretty supportive, but very submissive to his wife. Bliss is clearly not a fan of having to do these pageants, but she's from a small town and that's all they have to offer.

One day on a trip out of town Bliss sees a roller derby match and manages to con her way onto a team even though she's underage and ends up becoming their champion player. Yes this thing plays out like every sports/competition film you've seen. Yet, it still works. Why you ask? Well, it's because these characters are well developed and the film is very well paced. Bliss and her family seem realistic and they each have good reason for behaving the way that they do. The characters' growth and realizations are realistic.

Judging from interviews I've seen with Drew Barrymore I would have never guessed that she could create such a cohesive project. I have clearly been disproved as this is a pretty tightly written and directed work. It is really just a fun and charming little film about a sport that has its own little sub-culture. If you don't want to go see a roller derby match after this I don't know what's wrong with you.

A solid 3 stars ***

Director - Drew Barrymore

Alice In Wonderland - Alice by Numbers

My mom read the Lewis Carrol story to me when I was really young in the early 80s. Alice's adventures were truly wonderful, original and frightening back then. I remember seeing the Disney cartoon and that brought a whole new creepy visual aspect to the story that I really appreciated.

Fast forward to this new film and it just feels like we're retreading old ground. By this time we've all seen various versions of the Alice story. Here, Alice is older and going back to Wonderland, but does that bring anything new? Well, we have the Mad Hatter, White Rabbit, the Tweedles and so and so on (all stuff we've seen before). Johnny Depp is put in a ridiculous over the top costume as the Mad Hatter, but he manages to make the character interesting by giving us a truly mad person who switches between accents and personalities. The film's conclusion is an inevitable action sequence that seems to have no purpose, but to give us an action sequence. The film could have been about Alice finding her true self through wonderland. It could have had a redemption for the Red Queen as she's a sad woman with an enlarged head that just needs to be loved. Instead we get another banal good vs. evil story with the main character triumphing at the very end. Sure it all looks very pretty and is technically an achievement. Yet, in these post-Lord of the Rings and Avatar times we live in, this just another crazy, kooky looking fantasy film full of pretty sets and CGI (which is truly jarring in the case of Crispin Glover's digitally stretched out character).

Two and half stars **1/2

Trailer

Director - Tim Burton

Twilight & New Moon - These Vamps are Angsty

I haven't seen either one. Here's what I know.

Teen vampire/werewolf angst, big hair, sullen looks and wooden acting (you can pull a lot out of a trailer these days). Also word on the internet street is that the vampires in this series are not destroyed by sunlight, they simply glow and glitter. The whole thing seems to be made to appeal to that tween demographic which just seems silly. Vampires are insanely popular right now in America. Why make a film that limits the audience? Well because the tween audience is a cash cow and this film is not aspiring to be art, but simply a money machine is my guess.


No desire to see this one (no star ratings for films I haven't seen)

Trailer
Trailer

Directors - Catherine Hardwicke and Chris Weitz respectively

Avatar - Cowboys and Alien Native Americans

What's going on here? A distant moon called Pandora. Space marines working with a corporation (the Americans) that need to mine something called unobtainium. This unobtanium deposit is sitting right under a giant tree that's populated by blue alien cat people called the Na'vi (tree hugging liberal hippies/native American archetypes). The cat people are primitive, but they're really in touch with nature (they use every part of the 6 footed alien beastie when they kill it). They also plug their braids into the various beasts and trees in their world which seems to be equal parts spiritual and sexual. Oh also there are these scientists that control Na'vi bodies (created from human/Na'vi DNA) with their minds and a crippled marine who will go on to be a hero in one of these bodies. Now add a dash of awful dialogue and unrealistic, over the top villains.


I would be surprised if you didn't slap your head or at least groan at some of the above. Despite all that, this is still something that should be seen. The motion capture work is superb (you might develop a crush on a certain blue cat-woman) the computer created alien landscapes are beautiful and realistic. The amazing thing is that this movie will make you root against the marines/Americans and that's quite an accomplishment. Turn your mind off and go see it in 3D while you can.

3 stars ***

Trailer

Director - James Cameron

Shutter Island - Something Strange is Afoot on this Island

A cop investigates a mental institution on a foreboding island. There seem to be Nazi experiments, ghosts and lies all around. The set is frightening and mysterious. We can't immediately tell whether these doctors are evil, if we're truly missing a patient or why the medication seems to be flowing even for our protagonist.

There are twists a coming, but hey that's not me spoiling anything for you as the trailer shows it all. If you're really focused on the twist you've missed the point of the film. This film is really about character development and the process of how characters have arrived at their destination. It is a well done film that crosses the genres of mystery, thriller and drama. The only thing that keeps this from being a perfect film for me is that is that Dennis Lehane(author who wrote this as well as Mystic River)continues his general formula of creating a compelling story then handing you the resolution very late in the game without giving any real clues as to how we got there. Again that's not really the point of this film (credit may go to director Scorcese for this), but it's just not my preferred type of story.

3 stars ***

Trailer

Director - Martin Scorcese