Posted on 4/3/2010 8:00 PM By Ronen Divon
A tolerable movie, entertaining at times, fun animation, yet completely formulatedand lacking wit. Kids, however, love it.
Popular tags: DreamWorks Animation,
Chris Sanders,
Dean DeBlois,
Jay Baruchel,
Jay Baruchel,
Gerard Butler,
Christopher Mintz-Plasse,
Jonah Hill,
America Ferrera,
Craig Ferguson,
John Powell
Posted on 4/3/2010 8:00 PM By Ronen Divon
If the motto of many Hitchcock movies is placing an ordinary person in unordinary circumstances, then Baumbach may be the backward spelling of Hitchcock… This is to say that the main characters in the few Baumbach films I had a chance to see, exemplify extremes of character, of various types, placed, mostly, in the most ordinary situations. Greenberg is no different.
Posted on 3/28/2010 8:00 PM By Ronen Divon
A mostly harmless fun flick. It follows, for the most part, the traditional genre of time-travel sci-fi films, even if a hot-tub is used as the vehicle of choice. No big surprises in the thin plot, but then again, none are really called for. Watch with no expectations and you’ll have a good time.
Popular tags: Steve Pink,
Matt Moore,
John Cusack,
Grace Loh,
John Morris,
Josh Heald,
Jarrad Paul,
Sean Anders,
Rob Corddry,
Craig Robinson,
Clark Duke,
Chevy Chase,
Collette Wolfe,
Lizzy Caplan,
Kellee Stewart,
Christophe Beck
Posted on 3/17/2010 8:00 PM By Ronen Divon
The film has some potential but the thin script is not sufficient and the acting and direction reminded me of second year film school productions.
Posted on 3/14/2010 8:00 PM By Ronen Divon
Green Zone is a film that is complex as much as it is simple. On the complex end it reminded me of Kafka meeting Orwell: Big Brother watched (and tries to control) a nightmarish chaos. Yet, on the other hand, the film seems to simplify the war into action-packed good and evil story, which war is usually anything but. Green Zone does hint at deeper layers, which in an indie film would have probably been explored in more depth.
One reason I went to see Green Zone is Matt Damon, as I am a sucker for his Bourne movies, and I figured that if for nothing else, at least it will be good Bourne-like action, especially with Paul Greengrass at the helm as the director. And that I received – superb action was there, and plenty of it. But what is the film really about? Intelligent people such as Greengrass and Demon would not do a film with Iraq as the backdrop, unless they had a statement to make. What is this statement? That this war was made of a web of lies about WMD? That the Bush administration knowingly deceived the American people? All of this is now a known fact (at least to the majority of us, who are not blinded by political loyalty) and unless this film was made for future generations’ sake, why bother? The answer may be in some subtle lines and situations which the movie conveys – situations such as an attempt made by a decent soldier, portrayed by Damon, to try and keep a general from Saddam’s inner circle alive, in order to prove the deceit of the administration. For this soldier truth matters more than individual justice. Now this is a moral dilemma I would have liked to see more of. Similarly there are lines exchanged between Damon and a CIA official about naïveté which again are not well developed. I would have rather see it than hear the rhetoric of it. And then there is the helicopter hovering over a fighting scene, human targets tracked and clearly marked for a kill. The USA is trying to play a Big Brother over a chaotic Iraq. This is further enhanced by some American officials who believe they understand how to manipulate the local people into a democracy they are completely not ready for. These moments in the movie take it to a different level. Unfortunately these moments pass by almost unnoticed, swallowed into the engaging action, which, in this sense, does disservice to what may have been the film’s true intention.
All this made my rating task difficult, as this film’s rating hangs somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. But since I strictly follow the “no halves” rule (for now…) and when in doubt go with the lower rating, I’ll have to, with a somewhat heavy hear, go with 3.
Posted on 3/12/2010 7:00 PM By Ronen Divon
Loud, over-acted, and as expected as a storyline can go… Using the Witness Protection Program as a vehicle to place (or more accurately, displace) a stereotype of an Italian mobster into a close-knit Mormon community, this film is loaded with clichés, fart humor, and plain dumbness. It is a classic case of a mediocre (at best) story-line, decent cast guided by poor direction, that leads to pitiful results. With a slightly smarter script and a more capable director, this film could have looked very different.