RonenRecommends | All posts published by author 'Ronen Divon'

Ronen's Rating System:

*****	A must watch
****	Worth seeing
***	If you must watch a movie and there is nothing else out there
**	Don’t bother
*	It’s so bad its almost good... not... These are films I walked out on, or just fell asleep
(K: stars)	Rating by my children. As they are easy to please, would typically be higher than mine...

The Imitation Game (2014) ****

Posted on 1/14/2015 9:52 AM By Ronen Divon

A bio-historical war film, The Imitation Game tells the story of Alan Turin, a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and, as considered by many, the father of modern computers. Turin became famous on two accounts: being a key figure during WWII in cracking Enigma, the Nazi Germany encryption code, and, later, after the war, being criminally prosecuted for his homosexuality; a crime at the UK.

Into the Woods (2014) ***

Posted on 12/30/2014 8:11 PM By Ronen Divon

Inspired by the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales of "Little Red Riding Hood", "Cinderella", "Jack and the Beanstalk", and "Rapunzel", Into the Woods is a fantasy film directed by Rob Marshall, adapted to the screen by James Lapine from his and Stephen Sondheim's Tony Award–winning Broadway musical of the same title. The story is focused on a childless couple who finds themselves cursed by a vengeful witch. In their attempt to break the evil spell, the couple gets mixed up with various characters of other fairy tales.
Whether Into the Woods suffers from a poor adaptation or issues existed already in the original stage version, the film lacks the charm of a fairy tale and the simplistic wits of the original Grimm Brothers.

Unbroken (2014) ***

Posted on 12/30/2014 8:01 PM By Ronen Divon

Unbroken is a noble attempt by Angelina Jolie, who produced and directed the film, to bring to the big screen the 2010 biography by Laura Hillenbrand ‘Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.’ Not without merit, the film, whose screenplay was written by Joel and Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson, misses the mark.
Unbroken is not a bad movie. Many film critics wrote it off as "conventional," and conventional it is, which is not what one expects from such an unconventional life-story.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) ****

Posted on 12/24/2014 8:25 PM By Ronen Divon

The third and final installment in the film trilogy The Hobbit is directed, as its previous parts, by Peter Jackson to a screenplay by Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Guillermo del Toro. Here is the gist of it: if you are a J. R. R. Tolkien fan and feel that Jackson’s depiction of Middle-Earth and the various characters it inhibits are true to the source, this film is for you. It is lively, full of action, and expands in details well beyond the book, as Jackson interjected into the material appendices that Tolkien wrote as add-ons to the original story (published in the back of The Return of the King).

Top Five (2014) ***

Posted on 12/23/2014 7:02 PM By Ronen Divon

Top Five is a comedy-drama written and directed by Chris Rock, who also stars in the leading role. Additional cast members include Rosario Dawson, Gabrielle Union, J.B Smoove, and a whole lot of comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Sandler and Whoopi Goldberg, to mention only a few.
Top Five tells the story of a famous NYC comedian turned film star, who tries to abandon comedy in favor of more serious roles, only to find out that his past character, friends and deeds will not easily let that happen.

Nightcrawler (2014) ****

Posted on 12/8/2014 7:20 PM By Ronen Divon

Nightcrawler is a thriller written and directed by Dan Gilroy, staring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, and Bill Paxton. Nightcrawler tells the story of Lou Bloom, played by Gyllenhaal, a young person that seems to barely survive by stealing from construction sites scrap for sale. Discovering by chance a better way to make a living, Bloom turns to shooting video of news-worthy crime scenes, which he then sells to a TV station as a freelancer. Thus Bloom becomes a Paparazzi of crime.