Avatar
To a large degree, the environmental morality play contained in Avatar is painted in broad and simple strokes. Still, there is something compelling in the film’s embodiment of connection to and respect...
View ArticleAn Education
Funny, clever, poignant, painful, and redemptive, An Education puts us in the position of a teenage British school girl finding direction in life. If being serious about life is important, where is the...
View ArticlePrecious
Engaging, heart-wrenching, real, and strong, Precious delves deeply into dark places where our need for love collides with poverty — poverty of money, of spirit, of love, and of character. In the midst...
View ArticleThe Hurt Locker
Three quite different men; three different experiences of war. The Hurt Locker takes us inside a fictional Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team — a bomb squad — in Iraq. I can understand complaints...
View ArticleUp in the Air
What if your job had you on the road 322 days a year…traveling alone? What if you spent most of those days firing people? Starting with this bleak relational backdrop, Up in the Air explores hope,...
View ArticleDistrict 9
District 9 finds a compassionate — and violent — angle from which to explore shallow and ugly prejudice. As it pits the supposed goodness and wisdom of “the authorities” against the supposed...
View ArticleInglourious Basterds
If you take pleasure in revenge and you choose to go on taking pleasure in it, Inglourious Basterds will give you plenty to feed your pleasure. I don’t want that to be me, yet there is truth in what...
View ArticleUp
Charming, fun, and rich, Up takes us on an eventful animated ride watching the late-in-life transformation of Carl Fredricksen. Although the questions explored by the film are not particularly deep,...
View ArticleThe Blind Side
As a true story, the strength of The Blind Side is that it could have been embellished oh so much, but it was not. I suspect that no film adaptation of a true story is ever 100% factual, and I expect...
View ArticleA Serious Man
Have you had those times when nothing in life seems to fit? Times that you want the formula for how things work so you can try to fix them? A Serious Man is about that. But there’s more: watching the...
View ArticleOscar 2010: Best Picture Roundup
All ten of the 2010 Oscar Best Picture nominees are worth seeing, but for some, I recommend watching them only for specific reasons or under certain conditions. Three rise above the lot as particularly...
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