Having already ushered her to one Oscar win and another nomination, director David O. Russell reteams with his muse, Jennifer Lawrence, for the rambunctious, but wildly uneven “Joy.” A modern melodrama, “Joy” is inspired by the life of harried homemaker turned entrepreneur Joy Mangano, the inventor of the Miracle Mop. A creative, endlessly imaginative young […]
Bradley Cooper
Posted inMovies
Film Review: “Aloha”
Well, it has finally dawned on me that I might be in an abusive relationship with filmmaker Cameron Crowe. Things were just so good at the beginning, with “Say Anything…,” “Singles,” “Jerry Maguire,” and “Almost Famous,” all perfect in their own unique way yet thrumming with beautifully universal truths. But at the turn of the […]
Posted inMovies
Film Review: “Serena”
Now that we’re firmly entrenched in the 24-7 information age, ubiquity can often be a byproduct of a successful acting career. Keeping that gravy train on track requires work, and since her Oscar-nominated breakthrough in 2010’s “Winter’s Bone,” Jennifer Lawrence has appeared in about a dozen films. Add to that the perpetual self-promotion of talk […]
Posted inMovies
Film Review: “American Sniper”
The picture begins with a sniper in position on a rooftop in Iraq, looking through his scope first at a young man, then at a woman and a child, questioning over his radio whether he should take the shot. The response, “Your call,” provides no guidance, so that in this situation and throughout the movie, […]
Posted inMovies
“The Hangover Part III”
The magical number of three helps account for the success of some of the important literary and cinematic trilogies — in literature, for example, the Oedipus cycle, Shakespeare’s history plays about Henry IV and V, Dumas’s volumes about the Three Musketeers, Dos Passos’s “U.S.A.,” Farrell’s Studs Lonigan novels. In the cinema, the most obvious are […]
Posted inMovies
“The Place Beyond the Pines”
As the showing I attended of “The Place Beyond the Pines” — director Derek Cianfrance’s moody, ambitious, new crime-drama — came to an end, I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation happening amongst the college-age group sitting behind me. One was explaining to his friends that while the film wasn’t what he expecting, he thought it […]
Posted inMovies
“Room 237”
Rodney Ascher’s documentary, “Room 237,” playing at the Dryden this week, presents some very unusual interpretations of Stanley Kubrick’s classic adaptation of “The Shining.” Through voiceover, we hear from a number of people offering their explanations for what the director was really saying with his horror masterpiece. Using “clues” found in the film, they see […]
