“Summer of Film #5 of 100”:http://www.devanshanu.com/things/2005/06/12/2005-summer-of-film/
I sincerely hope there was a good reason for making this film in the first place, but let me put my critique of it this way: if the best thing in a movie starring Robert De Niro, Bill Murray and Uma Thurman is the great performance of David Caruso, then the movie has serious problems. Continue reading →

“Summer of Film #4 of 100”:http://www.devanshanu.com/things/2005/06/12/2005-summer-of-film/
If I tell you that Layer Cake is a British film directed by the producer of Lock, Stock and Smoking Barell and Snatch (Matthew Vaughn) you are going to think you probably know what kind of film it is. If I tell you it’s about a drug dealer who tries to get out of the business when a series of strange characters and events pull him back in; you’re going to be really sure you know what kind of a film this is.

Well, you are wrong. Continue reading →

“Summer of Film #3 of 100”:http://www.devanshanu.com/things/2005/06/2005-summer-of-film.html
This movie has a lot going for it; unfortunately it is not enough. With tremendous visuals and solid action sequences director William Friedkin creates a rare police procedural that should have impressed me a lot more than it did. Unfortunately, the movie has very little else to rest on- and since it sells does not sell itself as a spectacle it has to sell itself on drama and that is where it fails. There is no tension (except for two scenes) and the drug plot that drives policeman Popeye (Gene Hackman) is akin to something out of a TV movie.

The two scenes that do succeed are a virtuoso chase scene where Hackman chases a man on a train across town; and a the beginning of the climax. I say ‘beginning’ because there is no end. The movie ends in an abrupt scene that explains little and is a poor pay-off for a well set up climax. Continue reading →

Summer of Film #2 of 100
When I read this from Roger Ebert last week I thought my expectations were off the mark for Cinderella Man. I had figured it would be a manipulative drama that used boxing only to hide what it really was; a Ron Howard family drama. Ebert wrote:

I think of Crowe as a tough customer, known to get in the occasional brawl. Yes, he plays men who are inward and complex, as in “The Insider” and “A Beautiful Mind,” or men who are tempered and wise, as in “Master and Commander.” But neither he nor anyone else in a long time has played such a nice man as the boxer Jim Braddock. You’d have to go back to actors like James Stewart and Spencer Tracy to find such goodness and gentleness. Tom Hanks could handle the assignment, but do you see any one of them as a prizefighter? Tracy, maybe.

I was right though. Cinderella Man is a manipulative drama that uses boxing to mask its true self. Continue reading →

Summer of Film #1 of 100
Not exactly the best film to open my ‘summer of film’ with, but it was a Friday, it was fresh and it was playing at the local Landmark theatre– which as a combination makes it inevitable.

There are two films within Mr. and Mrs. Smith– one I shall refer to as ‘Mr.’ and the other as ‘.Mrs.’ Continue reading →