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Seriously, A Serious Man?

Seriously? That’s what I thought when I heard the Coen Brothers film announced as an Oscar nominee for best picture. It’s out on DVD now and I have to admit I saw it a while ago but I struggled with my review because all I wanted to say about it was “I hated it.” I can’t help but think that if anybody but Joel and Ethan Coen (Academy darlings that they are) had made this movie, it would never have been nominated for an Academy Award.

A Serious Man chronicles the woes of one Larry Gopnik, [... Keep reading]

And the Razzie Goes to…

With all the best picture this and best actor that of the awards season, we would be remiss if we didn’t include the Razzie Award nominations for the worst of the year. This year there are not many surprises, and we Chicks missed most (though not all) of the nominated films. Since Sandra Bullock will no doubt be nominated for an Oscar, she will be the first actress to be both a Razzie and an Academy Award nominee in the same year. Yay, Sandra!

Here are the Razzie nominees for 2009.

Worst [... Keep reading]

Avatar

I’ve heard it described as Dances with Aliens and that is a pretty good description, though I think Dances with Wolves had better character development. Avatar tells the story of a paraplegic soldier, Jake, who goes to the planet Pandora where evil corporate humans want to mine for a super-expensive, rare mineral, but the local population (Na’ vi) stands in the way. Jake is taking his dead brother’s place in a science program that infiltrates the Na’ vis by using avatars, earth people inhabiting Na’ vi bodies as they sleep in the lab. At first Jake is [... Keep reading]

Nine

If you are already a musical fan, you might enjoy Nine. I, however, am not a big musical fan so I went to see it hoping that it would be transcendent. It was not. The star-studded cast drew me in. Daniel-Day Lewis, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, even Sophia Loren… how could I resist? But I left underwhelmed. Only Marion Cotillard gave what I considered an excellent performance.

Cotillard plays the long-suffering wife of Day-Lewis’s character, Italian film director Guido Contini. Shooting is about to start on Guido’s new film, but there’s just one problem, he hasn’t written a word [... Keep reading]

Sunshine Cleaning

I will repeat what I said before; what is the deal with Amy Adams? I don’t get it that she is all over the place, pretty much playing the same role over and over. In Sunshine Cleaning, she is a sweet, well-meaning girl who is not making ends meet and not having the life everyone thought she would when she was a popular cheerleader in high school. Here she is a single mom, with a married boyfriend, barely making a living as a maid. Her kid has some behavior problems in school and they suggest she put [... Keep reading]

Fame

I went into this movie with an open mind – determined to view it through the eyes of a teenager, rather than the cynical (albeit musical-loving) adult that I am. After all, I was a (young) teenager when the original Fame debuted in 1980. So I was kinda psyched to see the new one, for old times’ sake. Whatever. This “updated” Fame is simply lame.

It says a lot that I can remember “Coco” and “Bruno” and “Leroy” and even “Mr. Shorofsky” from 29 years ago. Yet I strain to recall a single character from the version I just saw.

Like the [... Keep reading]

Love Happens

Love Happens happens to be quite dull. I hesitate to call it ‘formulaic’ because sometimes, the ‘romantic drama’ formula really works. In this case, the formula was either missing a few key ingredients or the proportions were off to such a degree that the cake just collapsed in the oven.

Aaron Eckhart plays a widower-turned-motivational speaker named Burke Ryan who travels from city to city, hosting seminars and peddling his book, “A-Okay”, a self-help guide to dealing with loss and grief. Turns out, however, that our smiling, empathetic hero is a hypocrite. He’s never really come to terms [... Keep reading]

All About Steve

Sandra, Sandra, Sandra… how could you? I expected more from you. After all, this summer you gave us The Proposal, a fun summer rom-com and total chick flick. But All About Steve… well… ugh.

Sandra Bullock stars as Mary Magdalene Horowitz a crossword constructor for a local California paper who is so socially inept that at first you think she might be somewhere on the autism spectrum. When her parents set her up on a blind date her expectations are low, but he turns out to be so “hot” that Mary can’t help but jump him as soon as they get [... Keep reading]

Inglourious Basterds

Where to start with this one? Quentin Tarantino has basically taken every spaghetti western cliché he can think of mixed it into a Nazi war movie and patched it together with a movie soundtrack that takes you back to all those big epic movies. Too bad he forgot to make any characters you actually care about. If he was paying homage or just being derivative of spaghetti westerns or war epics, he must have missed the part where they (the inglorourious basterds of the title) are the good guys, where they have a code that puts them above the [... Keep reading]

Junebug

If you are anything like me, you wonder what Amy Adams is doing all over the place. Seems like she is in everything. [I looked her up and sure enough she is one busy little bee. Maybe I exaggerate, but Julie & Julia (2009) Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) Doubt (2008/I) Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) Sunshine Cleaning (2008) Charlie Wilson's War (2007) Enchanted (2007) ain't too shabby] She’s been at it since 1999, but apparently the film that kicked her into high gear was Junebug. It [... Keep reading]