Movies
Give “Please Give” a Chance – Movie Review
February 8, 2011 | 
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Image by HowardLake via Flickr
Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, the comedy-drama Please Give (2010) has to do with moral responsibility when it is unmet (except in the case of Rebecca [Rebecca Hall]) and with feeling guilty. Kate (Catherine Keener) hands out money to the homeless and contemplates doing volunteer work only in order to assuage her guilt over exploiting the deaths of elderly people who own valuable furniture. Only near the film’s conclusion does she conduct a form of giving which is not just a means of reducing guilt, as when she agrees to buy her teenaged daughter a pair of costly jeans. Her culpability is nothing, however, compared with that of some other characters, who are nevertheless guilt-free. Whence comes this reality?
Holofcener (Friends With Money) is a true artist–and an intelligent one. This despite the fact that Please Give provides an unearned happy or optimistic ending. It resolves itself with scenes of family affection, which is inadequate.
Even so, the film is absorbing and the acting is utterly winning.
Juno – Movie Review. It’s Smart.
In Jason Reitman‘s smart, racy and delightful film, penned by Diablo Cody, Juno (Ellen Page) is a scrappy but sensitive teen girl who initiates sex with her male chum Paulie (Michael Cera) and afterwards gets big with child. She can’t bring herself to have an abortion but is too young to parent, so adoption is the only alternative. Check out more »
The Bank Job – Based on a True Story?
The Bank Job is a film directed by Roger Donaldson. My bro Dean D. wrote a review of it….Check it:
- Cover of The Bank Job
Is it a true story? Don’t make me laugh. It is as preposterous as it is convoluted. It DERIVES from something that went on in London in 1971: a bank robbery about which British journalists swiftly stopped reporting. Presumably the robbery was meant to benefit the royal family after the escapades of Princess Margaret: privacy-invading, erotic photographs and all that. Check out more »
Elegy Isabel Coixet adaptation of The Dying Animal
The Dying Animal by Philip Roth? Not for me; I’ve never read it. Maybe it’s good, but I like the Philip Roth who wrote “Defender of the Faith,” Goodbye Columbus and, perhaps, The Ghost Writer.
All the same, “Elegy,” the Isabel Coixet adaptation of The Dying Animal, is a notable if austere film about a senior-citizen professor and his young Latino lover. Check out more »
Changeling Movie Review
I got tired long ago of movies that focus on immoral, abusive police officers. There are too many of them. Clint Eastwood‘s “Changeling” does that, too, but I can take a small amount of comfort in the fact that ITS police officers exist numerous decades ago in the late 1920s.
Cover of Changeling
And in the fact that there’s a brutal, psychopathic killer in the film whom the police don’t try to protect.
Ah, but what about all the snake-pit balderdash at the mental hospital to which poor Angelina Jolie is consigned?
“Changeling” is more intriguing than successful. Joe Morgenstern of the “Wall Street Journal” correctly points out that
a) folks in the Twenties didn’t jabber about self-esteem and
b) the woman played by Jolie and the preacher played by John Malkovich are together a lot “but don’t really interact.”
They should, but they don’t.
Eastwood’s film handles some grisly subject matter with an ineptitude so many of his other movies have been marked with as well.
Related articles
- Clint Eastwood Advises Angelina Jolie to Get Some Rest (people.com)
- Angelina Jolie Gets To Directing Her First Film (pinkisthenewblog.com)
- Movie Review: Salt (blogcritics.org)
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