May 8
Based on the novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games is essentially dystopic science fiction for the YA set. It is a hodgepodge of several other (and better) pictures and it is, in all honesty, rather weak sauce on its own merits. The film lacks impact and emotional scope, despite some rather compelling scenes, and remains a well-polished but relatively stale exercise.
The Woman in Black is Daniel Radcliffe’s first post-Potter vehicle. Directed by James Watkins and based on the novel of the same name by Susan Hill, this is a moody Edwardian ghost picture that utilizes many of the clichés of the genre. It is a kind of sluggish picture, one that relies more on mood than substance, and it never really seems to get off the ground.
Directed by Danis Tanović, Cirkus Columbia was the Bosnian entry for the 2010 Best Foreign Language Oscar. It is a picture about war and its consequences, but it approaches things from a slightly unconventional stance and winds up very nearly being a domestic soap opera set against the blossoming of the Bosnian War.
You can check out the rest of this review at Cirkus Columbia Movie Review: A Fairly Good Motion Picture at Cinema Sentries.
In an age where many of us have taken to social networking to find out what’s happened to those we grew up with and spent our formative years with, Jason Reitman’s Young Adult is a near-perfect capsule of what it feels like to look down on someone – and fall flat on our faces. Written by Diablo Cody, this film marks the first time since Juno that the writer and Reitman have worked together.
Contraband, directed by Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur, is about as uneven a heist picture as I’ve ever seen. It is an unwieldy film that feels like it could work were it simplified and given a style injection. It is a detail-oriented picture, one that runs countless tangents and seems particularly bogged down in technical minutiae about this job or that job.
