David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Good People” presents audiences with a window into the lives of the working poor of South Boston, known as “Southies.”
TIME ONCE AGAIN for saluting the year's Ten Best movies. Although 2006 brought a handful of terrific films, overall it seemed an off year for cinema: more movies than ever, but few that registered strongly. Those that did are remembered here.
As we embarked on our annual November-December process of catching up with the myriad films missed in the course of the year and zeroing in on our notions of the best, Kathleen Murphy remarked that 2007 hadn't been a year for great films. No, I agreed, only one or two seemed worthy of deeming great (an adjective we take pretty seriously), but there had been a healthy crop of really good, smart, ambitious movies that lingered in the mind. And in its way, that was almost as gratifying, and maybe more reassuring, than half a dozen masterpieces.
RED, an action-comedy that will probably be bumping around the multiplexes for a while, may seem an inauspicious candidate to inaugurate our Queen Anne & Magnolia News movie blog....
Howard Hawks assigned Christian Nyby to direct this excursion into sci-fi horror, one of the few genres he hadn't yet worked in. Although the producer graciously insisted in interviews that Nyby had made a fine job of it, in later years surviving cast members had no hesitation in asserting that Hawks himself did most of the picture.
As the credits of Suspiria roll, a voice, disembodied as any of the English-language ghosts who dub foreign pictures for U.S. release, supplies us with a little background information....
Queen Anne resident Tom Tafelsky has been named operations manager for the Queen Anne Farmers Market (QAFM).
Sally Potter’s “Ginger and Rosa” is a coming-of-age story focusing on two British teen girls. It doesn’t necessarily cover new ground, but like Stephen Chbosky’s wonderful 2012 movie ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” it’s done in a graceful, eloquent and non-overdramatic way. Also like “Perks,” Potter focuses virtually all of the attention on the characters.
In 1931, the director Robert Florey lived in a Los Angeles apartment with a view of a Dutch-style bakery and its logo, a windmill complete with turning vanes....
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novella on the duality of human personality, has been retold so often that we watch any new adaptation through layers of memory and expectation - rather like Fredric March's subliminal makeup in the 1932 version that became visible, and effected the onscreen transformation of the handsome doctor into his coarser counterpart, when the cameraman slipped the right filter in front of the lens.
Let's get the suspense out of the way first. I've been taken over: I came to the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with a purist's proper disdain for anyone who presumes to redo a classic movie, but as I sat brooding in the darkness, Phil Kaufman's 1978 version put out its tendrils and pretty soon everything seemed just fine and why should I go around getting upset over little things?
Abandon hope, all who enter here in search of plot, conventional storytelling or a clear indication of exactly what's going on. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Paul Weitz’ “Admission” could have been a really good, genuine comedy/drama about motherhood and parenting. It stars Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, two actors capable of doing intelligent and authentic comedy. Unfortunately, they are let down by the movie, which goes down the conventional, contrived and broad romantic-comedy path.
Few can resist feeling a little smug when the mighty are fallen.
“Beyond the Hills” is the best demonic possession and exorcism movie I’ve seen in years. Though it isn’t technically a demonic-possession movie because the supposed-possessed girl isn’t actually possessed.