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By Arty Chick, on February 21st, 2010
 This is a wonderful film! It should be on the expanded Academy Awards list for Best Picture, but sadly it isn’t. At least both Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as his wife Sofya are nominated in their respective acting categories. The Last Station is the story of the last years of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s life, his tempestuous relationship with this wife, his coterie of adoring sycophants who turned him into a cult figure, and a young man who became his personal secretary and family confidante.
Fear not though; this is not a [... Keep reading]
By Mainstream Chick, on February 13th, 2010
 Dear John seemed to come out of nowhere Super Bowl weekend to rake in more than $30 million and overtake Avatar atop the Box Office charts. But those aliens of Pandora needn’t worry too much. Movie-goers will write off Dear John way before it gets anywhere near Avatar’s record-breaking totals. Not that it’s a bad movie. It just doesn’t resonate beyond the theater walls. And I didn’t cry once!
Dear John is the latest in a slew of Nicholas Sparks novels to be turned into a big screen romantic drama (The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, Nights [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on February 6th, 2010
 The Hurt Locker is one of those films that came and went without much fanfare, and then when all the awards nominations began to come out, it was on just about everyone’s list as best film of the year. (It received 9 Oscar nominations.) Fortunately, it is now out on DVD.
What sets this movie apart from most other “war films” is the silence. Instead of loud testosterone-driven battle scenes, The Hurt Locker is about the quiet, intense moments that are the norm for an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit (EOD), a squad charged [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on January 24th, 2010
 End of the world as we know it/post-apocalyptic cinema is all the rage these days and The Book of Eli is the latest addition to this genre. As post-apocalypse fare, it is a pretty entertaining flick. Then again, it stars charismatic Denzel Washington who is as usual a lot of fun to watch. This time he is Eli, a lone traveler in a color-drained world some 30 years after a nuclear blast scorched the earth. He is in possession of the last known copy of the King James Bible and is on a [... Keep reading]
By Mainstream Chick, on January 23rd, 2010
 The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is one of those small arty films starring an impressive roster of accomplished actors who probably took the gig for the love of the material rather than box-office glory. It’s a psychological drama tinged with wry humor and melancholy. So if you like that sort of stuff, you’ll probably like this film.
Robin Wright Penn plays Pippa Lee, a middle-aged woman who’s married to a much older man (Herb, played by Alan Arkin) who decides the couple should live out their remaining years together in a staid retirement community in Connecticut. [... Keep reading]
By Mainstream Chick, on January 4th, 2010
 A Single Man is a good movie, but not an entertaining one. Colin Firth delivers a quietly stunning performance as George Falconer, a middle-aged college professor struggling to get through life after the accidental death of his longtime partner, Jim. The movie is set in 1962 Los Angeles against a backdrop of fear involving the Cuban Missile Crisis and an undercurrent of anti-gay sentiment. The story revolves around a single day in George’s life – a day in which he goes about his usual routine while also preparing to commit suicide. Brief, intermittent flashbacks provide [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on January 4th, 2010
 I heard about Chéri when it was around, but being in small town USA, it was only here for an instant and I missed it. Fortunately, it is now on DVD and it is a great chick flick, especially for women over 35. 50+ and still ravishing, Michelle Pfeiffer is lovely playing Léa, a courtesan of a certain age in Belle Époque Paris. Rupert Friend (Albert in The Young Victoria) plays Chéri, the 19-year-old son of one of Léa’s old courtesan rivals (Kathy Bates). He has known and loved Léa since childhood, and [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on January 2nd, 2010
 Another post-apocalyptic movie? Seems there can’t be too many of them these days. The difference though with The Road is that it has a real story and isn’t reliant on special effects to tell it. Adapted from the brilliant Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, it stays very close to the book’s original plot. And that may be why it never gets beyond being a good movie.
The Road is a very bleak, very quiet story of a father and son trying to make it to a better, warmer location after some unnamed cataclysm has turned the [... Keep reading]
By Adventurous Chick, on December 31st, 2009
 Crazy Heart almost went straight to DVD and that would have been a crying shame because then hardly anyone would have known about what is probably Jeff Bridges’ best performance to date. Thankfully, it did make it to theaters and you can go see Bridges playing washed up country singer Bad Blake.
The movie’s got all the elements of a country song – a down and out cowboy traveling the highways and byways alone in a beat-up truck after too much booze and too many failed marriages, until the love of a good woman turns things around. And I dare say [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on December 30th, 2009
 To look at The Young Victoria for historical accuracy would be the wrong way to approach it. Screenwriter Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park) admits to taking dramatic license in many places for effect. And it is effective as a coming of age love story set inside that gilded cage known as the British monarchy. The story begins with 17 year-old Victoria a heartbeat away from being crowned Queen, as her mother, the scheming Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson), along with her power hungry advisor (Mark Strong) attempt to set up a regency thereby taking power themselves until [... Keep reading]
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What is Chickflix? In a nutshell, it’s a website/blog developed by three women on a mission to offer fun, informative, easy to digest movie reviews from a uniquely female perspective. (...more) |
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