Life Partners Written by Susanna Fogel and Joni Lefkowitz Directed by: Susanna Fogel USA, 2014 Long-term friendships are probably the most treasured definition of a kind of ideal relationship that an individual could ever develop in their lives. This is certainly so for late twenty-somethings Sasha and Paige, the perky protagonists in director Susanna Fogel’s …
The Judge is an actor’s showcase that gets lost in the weeds of tired family dynamics and clunky subplots. There are moments when Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall are allowed to take their characters into more dangerous places, but mostly they’re just constrained by an uninteresting story. The result is a film that packs no emotional wallop and builds to a conclusion that is neither surprising nor satisfying.
The Oranges Directed by Julian Farino Written by Ian Helfer and Jay Reiss USA, 2011 Voiceover narration isn’t automatically a crutch in modern storytelling, but too many writers use it so they don’t have to do actual work. For every clever use of this literary trick—such as the narration in Sunset Boulevard or The Shawshank …
*Disclaimer: the following is based on and an expansion of an article written by Peter Howell, the Toronto Star Movie Critic. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a film of the lowest common denominator adds nothing to the institution of cinema. But as profiteers like Adam Sandler have already understood, when money speaks, truth is …