Mini Movie Reviews Archives
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Commentary – Hugo
So here we are once again in the midst of the holiday movie season with plenty of family fun and enchantment to choose from: The Muppets make a comeback; Happy Feet II or is it III?; For the tweens and teens, another addition to the Twilight Saga, and for adults wanting to take their children to something magical with a message – Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, based on Brian Selznick award winning book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The film is set circa 1930’s, although Hugo (Asa Butterfield) looks like a street urchin straight out of a Dickens novel. He’s an orphan whose wonderfully loving father, a clockmaker (Jude Law) dies…
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20th Philadelphia Film Festival – BUTTER
When the butter committee feels Bob should bow out of this season to allow someone else a chance at the "Blue Bonnet" :-) I mean blue ribbons. Laura decides she's not about to let all her ambitions melt away and signs up to compete herself...
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20th Philadelphia Film Festival – SHAME
by Le Anne Lindsay, Editor Michael Fassbender has a Dirk Diggler size schlong! And an Adonis rear-end. Beyond that, I don’t remember anything about the film Shame. Just kidding. Well, about the film’s resonance, not about Fassbender. In actuality, the film stayed with me for quite awhile. Seeing two people in so much pain with no clue how to get relief, yet basically from the outside, look as if they are managing the day in and out of life. Director Steve McQueen (Hunger), (why doesn’t he go by S. McQueen or use his middle name, Rodney or Stephen?) has created an intense character study of a sex addict without really…
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Commentary – TOAST
This same excitement and enthusiasm for all things culinary would follow Nigel Slater into adulthood and into British celebrity. The film Toast is the early biography of Slater's life growing up in Wolverhampton, England with a very sweet, but sickly mother, who relied heavily on serving toast for meals when her meager attempts at preparing dinner would turn out unappetizing and often inedible...
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Commentary – The Big Year
by Le Anne Lindsay, written for CINEDELPHIA.com The movie’s about a competition, but the competition is really a metaphor for trying to achieve great ambition. It’s about the pursuit of excellence, and it’s about three guys who are just trying to get outside of their normal, everyday existence and achieve something they’ve always dreamed of… – Director David Frankel (Marley & Me) excerpt from interview on BirdingBlogs.com What are these three guys played by Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson trying to achieve? A Big Year! A term in Birding (not to be called bird watching) for an entire year spent traveling around the country, up hills, down rivers,…
