Picoreview: August: Osage County is a story about a wildly dysfunctional family, with an absolutely dreadful matriarch played by Meryl Streep and–primarily, although really not at all singularly–her personal war with her oldest daughter, played by Julia Roberts. The real skill of the performances is that although many of the characters are just awful people, they’re all *understandable*. At moments they’re all even sympathetic, which, given how dreadful most of them are, is pretty impressive. There are possibly no mis-steps with the casting (I don’t personally like Dermot Mulroney or…
Tag: picoreviews
Picoreview: Frozen
Picoreview: Frozen: conflicting. There are a lot of things I didn’t like about this movie. The music is possibly the worst I’ve ever heard in a Disney film. Usually their songs tend to fit into the narrative pretty well; this really felt like the songs were being forced to fit into spaces unnaturally, and that these characters would prefer to be speaking. There were any number of times that I found myself thinking how much I would like to have seen it done in hand-drawn animation. There were moments where…
Picoreview: The Desolation of Smaug
Picoreview: The Desolation of Smaug: It is my personal hope that there will be a 2 hour Director’s Cut of The Hobbit that only has, you know. The stuff in the book. We re-watched An Unexpected Journey last night, which is frankly a long, long movie in which almost nothing happens. Smaug possibly, if you look at it sideways, has more happen, but (major structural spoilers ahoy)
Picoreview: Thor: The Dark World
Picoreview: Thor: The Dark World (spoiler-free): Thor thor thor thor Loki Thor Loki Thor Loki Thor Loki Thor thor thor thor loki Loki LOKI Loki loki thor thor thor Loki Loki Loki LOKI thor Stay through ALL THE CREDITS, people. ALL THE CREDITS. One does not simply walk out of a Marvel movie before the credits are done rolling! (not spoilery but not without an opinion behind the cut):
Picoreview: Rush
Picoreview: Rush: does what it says on the tin. Actually, it does more than that. It’s a very, very good movie, and this from someone who hasn’t got two sh…akes…to give when it comes to car racing. Chris Hemsworth plays more or less to type as a big, likeable jackass; Daniel Brühl, whom I haven’t seen before and therefore couldn’t be playing to type, was not especially likeable but wasn’t supposed to be, either. If there was a flaw, it was that I didn’t feel the instant and profound antagonism…