Quick Hits

The Runaways

The Runaways is not nearly as wild as it should be and lacks depth, its paper thin story leaving the audience wondering far too much about what isn't being told. On a positive note, the film captures the look and feel of the mid-seventies, with solid performances from Stewart, Fanning and Shannon. 


The Crazies

A remake of Romero's 1973 film of the same name, Eisner's Crazies never really gets under your skin. It telegraphs most of its scares, and too much of the movie is spent in typical horror movie fashion: running and hiding. It has its moments, and as far as remakes go, it's better than most, if that's really saying much.


Summer Hours













Summer Hours is a hauntingly beautiful and bittersweet film with excellent performances by the leads. This is not a character or plot driven film, but a thematic one, meditative and philosophical and evocatively told.  


Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 

Effective and simple, this 2008 documentary intersperses game footage with interviews from some of the players and people who lived it, suspense slowly and surprisingly building toward an improbable conclusion, even though we already know the outcome.


The Runaways
Score: 60%

The Crazies
Score: 55%

Summer Hours
Score: 79%

Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
Score: 68%

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Click on the titular link and watch the Criterion "trailer." It's a clipped scene from the movie that, among other things, tells the viewer the story behind Eddie's nickname. If this scene doesn't hook you and make you think, "Damn, I need to check this movie out," then what could I possibly say that would change your mind?   

The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Score: 72%

Micro Reviews

Thirst had a lot of promise but fell far short of it, and at an exhausting length. This movie is about 30 minutes too long. Park Chan-Wook tries to mix too many genres; the result is an incoherent mess that only works sometimes and misses as a whole. It begins with the promise of an artistic, intellectual vampire story but sadly devolves into a shock-for-the-sake-of-shock style horror story with farcical humor, that along with the mishmash of genres, just seems incongruous with the earlier tease of something smarter.

Revanche is a movie I was looking forward to seeing, and it didn't disappoint. It is the type of film that made me a lover of cinema in the first place; but sadly, films like this rarely get made anymore. Spielmann directs with great control and economy, drawing wonderfully understated performances from his actors. In the opening scene, something makes a splash in a pond, sending ripples across the still water. Revanche takes a lot from this opening shot, the quiet of the woods disrupted by a loud splash, the stillness of the water broken and the ripples that this creates. But there is also the reflecting nature of the water's surface, and the murkiness beneath. Yes, I'm deliberately being vague; and I (as usual) recommend skipping the trailer and opting for a pure cinematic experience.

Thirst

Score: 52%

Revanche

Score: 79%