Universal Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
Trash (2015)
Depictions of child poverty in well-meaning screen entertainments are bound to end up fudging the heart of the matter, since catching even five percent of the true grinding horror would bring an audience to its knees. “Trash” can’t really do anything about that, substituting instead a YA tone of earnest adolescent adventuring in a landscape of adult corruption and violence — ultimately the easier option.
Although Andy Mulligan’s source novel described a slum of imprecise location, Stephen Daldry‘s film plants its flag in Rio de Janeiro, giving the greedy politicians and murderous cops an imminent Olympic bonanza as extra rationale for lining their own pockets and ignoring the kids rummaging through their garbage mountains. Three of those — Raphael (Rickson Tevez), Gardo (Eduardo Luis) and Rato (Gabriel Weinstein) — find evidence of high-level corruption in a discarded wallet somewhere in there, and the chase is on.
Continue reading “Modern Life Is Rubbish” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Pirate Radio (2009)
Alex Bailey/Focus Features
A box office bomb in Britain, “The Boat That Rocked” has been re-titled, re-edited and handed off to Focus Features for its American release. The move is unlikely to help matters. Now known as “Pirate Radio,” Richard Curtis’s tribute to the illegal radio stations that broadcast rock music to Britain in the 1960s functions as no more than a halfhearted collection of scenarios and characters that’d be more at home in a sitcom.
Continue reading “Humor Misses the Boat” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009)
Lionsgate
Richard Curtis has a lot to answer for. This does not apply to “Blackadder,” the most amusingly misanthropic show ever. Nor does it apply to his charity work with Comic Relief and the astounding amounts of money it has raised. But it does apply to “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and everything that followed it. Not only the subsequent films he has written, but also those he inspired, “Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel” included.
Continue reading “Back From the Future” »