The Blind Side (review)
‘Is this some sort of white guilt thing?’ one of Sandra Bullock’s ladies-who-lunch friends asks her Tennessee socialite after she informally adopts a homeless black teen…
coming of age
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (review)
I’m not sure how a story like the one that unfolds in *Precious* can be anything other than the harrowing, painful, heartbreaking, explicit work that it is.
An Education movie review: A-plus
Someone once said that perfect movies are boring and only flawed movies intriguing, and then along comes a movie like An Education, about which the number of things that are absolutely perfect is impossible to measure… and it’s thrilling and captivating anyway.
Whip It (review)
I always knew Drew Barrymore could be this cool: her directorial debut is a simultaneously sweet and kickass story about one girl’s finding her bliss, a movie that works within Hollywood conventions of storytelling to handily demonstrate that just because a tale is familiar doesn’t mean it can’t be fresh and funny and edgy, too.
Bright Star movie review: cinematic poetry
John Keats is the intruder in Fanny Brawne’s story, and you might be forgiven for assuming that she’s the one who became legendary, for how the film defies convention by lavishing its focus on her.
My One and Only (review)
What could have been a maddening portrait of spoiled self-entitlement is, instead, a plucky tale about how tough life could be a woman, even a beautiful one, in the 1950s…
Post Grad (review)
People have names like Ryden Malby only in the movies. And we’re only expected to like people like Ryden Malby in the movies… though I don’t see why we should give in to that kind of peer pressure.
Bandslam (review)
It’s official: rock ’n’ roll has been tamed.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (review)
So, is this the fourth Harry Potter movie, or the fifth? It’s the sixth? Really, already? Ah, that’s the one where Harry goes to the magic school, which has yet another new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, right? And Harry fights the evil wizard?
I Love You, Beth Cooper (review)
Though he’s never so much as spoken to the poor girl before, nerd announces during his high-school valedictorian speech that he ‘loves’ the ‘hottest’ girl in school. In the real world, this would be called an act of passive-aggressive behavior by an antisocial creep…
