Claire | January 3, 2012
Penelope was a 2006 film starring Cristina Ricci, James McAvoy, and Reese Witherspoon, about a woman cursed with the nose of a pig. Loosely based on European folk tales about a pig-faced woman, it was billed as a fantasy/comedy. There’s a playful use of camera and color here that reminds me alternately of Amelie and [...]
Claire | September 22, 2011
This is a disappointing film. Science-fiction films that play with concepts of time, reality, and alternate and/or parallel universes are on the rise, but The Adjustment Bureau, which came out just prior to Source Code, was a much better-developed film that falls into this category. Source Code has three strands: Colter Stevens’ (Jake Gylenhaal) attempts [...]
Claire | December 29, 2010
Coffetteer Stars: 2/5 The Tourist is a stylish, sleek, enjoyable film which ultimately rings hollow. A remake of a French thriller called Anthony Zimmer, directed by Jerome Salle and starring Sophie Marceau and Yvan Attal, it stars Johnny Depp and Angelinie Jolie in a tale of an American tourist who gets caught up in intrigue [...]
Claire | August 28, 2010
Dil Chahta Hai is an unusually good Bollywood film, solidly written with good music, an excellent cast, and plenty of hilarious one-liners and funny situations. It runs a little too long, as usual – the plot slows down particularly in the middle – but Aamir Khan turns in his usual nuanced performance as an inveterate [...]
Claire | August 6, 2010
Dhoom 2 made me fall utterly in love with Bollywood again. It’s ridiculously titled and is in fact a ridiculous over-the-top action/romance extravaganza, but it’s sheer good fun and lit by amazing acting, snappy dialogue, and high-budget cinematography. It’s loosely plotted and there’s an entire character (the female cop) who dominates the first half hour [...]
Claire | April 7, 2010
Imported from my other blog Stars: 1/5 And When Did You Last See Your Father begins with a promise and ends with a song, and provides nothing in between. The promise is the brilliant title, the song is the brilliant ending scene, and the rest is, as the British would say, horrid. It looked like [...]
Claire | December 27, 2009
Re-posting this review from an older blog. Rating:4/5 stars Who knew that Bollywood(Indian) romance could be so good? Winner of 11 film awards and a classic of Bollywood, I had never heard of this film(translated, The Brave Heart will Take the Bride) and stumbled across it by accident on Netflix, getting it on a whim. [...]
