Category: Stu’s Reviews

Title: Side Effects

Genre: Film

Grade: B+

Notable People: Jude Law, Mara Rooney, Catherine Zeta- Jones, Channing Tatum…Steven Soderbergh- Director

Review: Surprisingly good suspense yarn about mental illness, insider trading, pharmaceuticals and murder; quite a mélange of topics I’d say. Pull it off pretty well- with some really good red herrings. Law and Jones are very good. Rooney (Girl with Dragon Tattoo) is superb. Is Channing Tatum really the “sexiest man alive”? C’mon.

Title: Flight

Genre: film

Grade: B+

Notable People: Denzel, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, Bruce Greenwood, Directed by Robert Zemekis

Review: Saw this at the discount theater as kind of “throw-off” and was very pleasantly surprised. Kind of a haunting film about alcoholism in the main stream. Denzel is puffy and great. Cheadle is slimy. Reilly is wonderful. Don’t see it right before you fly- a bit unsettling. Some pretty surprising plot turns here after some very predictable ones. Worth seeing

Title: Lincoln

Genre: Film

Grade: B

Notable People: Directed by Steven Spielberg, Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones

Review: A potent story about Lincoln’s- efforts to abolish slavery via the passage of the 13th amendment in the waning days of the War. Beautifully filmed with Spielberg’s attention to period detail. Virtuoso performances by Day Lewis and Jones. Loved the depictions of early congressional warfare- when Republicans were more like Democrats. For me, though, the film really dragged and was way too long. I think this is one you could watch on the small screen and enjoy as much..

Title: Not Fade Away

Genre: Film

Grade: A- /B+

Notable People: Directed by David Chase, John Magaro, Jack Huston, and James Gandolfini

Review: what a great movie to see on a winters’ afternoon. I gave it a split rating because I’m not sure if the appeal is more “of an age”. For me- it captured very well the dreams of the early-mid sixties; the culture, the music, the simplicity that was quickly becoming something else. David Chase and James Gandolfini reunite from the Sopranos- and they do it really well; clearly a love poem from Chase. Gandolfini is superb (though not a huge stretch from Tony Soprano) as the blue collar Jersey dad trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Steve Van Zant oversees the music with great panache. The movie opens with teen aged Mick and Keef meeting on train and talking blues, and ends with the mid teen younger sister (and narrator) dancing in the middle of LA’s Sunset Strip; seemingly a dance into the change that was to come. In between- there is some great sixties garage rock. I really liked this movie a lot and it made me want to reclaim my lost Stratocaster and old fashioned mike. Greet McGuinn-esque Rickenbacker guitar makes a cameo.

Title: Gangster Squad

Genre: Film

Grade: C-

Notable People: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Sean Penn

Review: What should I say about this one. I love dark movies set in post war LA. Chinatown set the bar for this and many have tried to follow. This one is an amalgam of the two great special cop squad movies of our era- The Untouchables and LA Confidential. The film tries to take from both of these and simply comes out as a flat cliché of itself. You don’t even get the real feeling of LA in this time period from the shoot. Lots of automatic weapons and blood. Bad dialog, bad Mickey Cohen channeling (Penn), bad boys club motif. Brolin’s gang of rogue cops could really use Sean Connery and Kevin Spacey. Emma Stone is hot and Nick Nolte has a good little run as the stand up Police Chief. That’s it. I was pretty excited to see this- but I’d say catch it late at night on TV. Boo…. (Nate – does this make you feel better about the reviews?)