By Brian Lafferty

January 7, 2011 (San Diego) – Looking at a few of Blue Valentine’s negative reviews (as of today, the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer stands at 91% with only nine “rotten” reviews against eighty-six positive) I find the film’s unfavorable comparisons to the directorial work of the late John Cassavetes a recurring observation.

Granted, the movie isn’t the first to explore a marriage’s disintegration. Cassavetes’ Faces and Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road come to mind. However, I believe this criticism is unfair to Blue Valentine. I don’t mind if a movie doesn’t have an original plot as long as it has unique and strong characters. This movie is populated with two of them.

By Brian Lafferty

December 11, 2010 (San Diego)--While watching Tiny Furniture, which opened yesterday at the Ken Cinema, I was somewhat captivated and never bored. It accomplishes its goals and captures without fail the feeling it wants to convey.

By Brian Lafferty

November 12, 2010 (San Diego) – The Freebie has a simple story, and it runs only seventy-eight minutes, but director Katie Aselton has crafted a movie that is more than mere premise. In addition to having two likeable characters and dialogue that is real, honest and rich, the movie also kept me guessing until the very end.

By Brian Lafferty

November 7, 2010 (San Diego) – Due Date feels like an in-between job for Todd Phillips. His previous film, last year’s The Hangover, is one of the funniest comedies I’ve ever seen and that is not something I say lightly. The sequel is set to release next year. Due Date doesn’t have anywhere near the number of laughs as The Hangover, which I don’t fault; that movie achieved a seemingly impossible feat in which every single gag was not only funny but downright hilarious. But Due Date has enough laughs for me to recommend it.

By Brian Lafferty

October 23, 2010 (San Diego)--After the hilarious yet powerfully dramatic and tragic Gran Torino and the rousing Invictus, director Clint Eastwood has followed up with the somber and sedate Hereafter, which presented a challenge for my attention span. The movie opens with a spectacular tsunami that nearly takes the life of French journalist Marie LeLay (Cecile De France). For the first hour after this sequence I started getting a little restless, feeling that the film wasn’t delivering anything close to the level of the opening action. But that changed over the next hour and I began to fully appreciate it. It doesn’t rank among Eastwood’s best directorial efforts but it is a good movie that doesn’t have a lot to say about its subject matter but is interesting if you’re willing to listen.

By Brian Lafferty

October 17, 2010 (San Diego)--Nowhere Boy doesn’t offer anything revelatory about John Lennon but that doesn’t matter. It is easy to go into this movie expecting something extraordinary. But if the film were to take such an approach, it would have been wrong. We know Lennon is a legend but that began as a member of The Beatles. The filmmakers could have made a film about his time with the Fab Four or his relationship with Yoko Ono. But writer Matt Greenhalgh and director Sam Taylor-Wood elect to explore a time in this man’s life that hasn’t really been touched on: his teenage years.

By Brian Lafferty

October 3, 2010 (San Diego)--You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger features a lot of great actors. Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Freida Pinto and Antonio Banderas make up most of the ensemble cast. It is also written and directed by Woody Allen. But despite all the talent here, the movie did nothing for me because they are all involved in a nonessential movie.

By Brian Lafferty

October 3, 2010 (San Diego)--Claustrophobia seems to be a popular theme in the last two months. Lebanon took place entirely within a tank populated by four Israeli soldiers during the First Lebanon War. Whatever was seen outside the tank was limited to what was viewed through the periscope. Devil had several people stuck in an elevator with someone eventually revealed to be the Devil himself. Now we have Buried, a film featuring Ryan Reynolds in Iraq buried several feet underground in a coffin. This is a movie that must be seen in the theater to fully appreciate it. Not even the best home theater system can faithfully replicate the claustrophobic effects experienced at the cinema.

By Brian Lafferty

September 25, 2010 (San Diego)--Bran Nue Dae is a film so dreadful I felt embarrassed just watching it. Everything about it literally made me cringe. Only the completionist in me got me staying until the end. Once the end credits began to roll, I didn’t just walk out of the theater. I ran to the nearest exit. No, I’m not making this up.

By Brian Lafferty

September 24, 2010 (San Diego)--My favorite scene in the French film Heartbreaker comes towards the end. Alex (Romain Duris), who is tasked with breaking up a heiress’s relationship with her fiance, puts on I’ve Had the Time of My Life from her favorite movie Dirty Dancing. He starts dancing, having memorized all the steps. I cracked a really wide smile when Bill Medley began singing. I wasn’t laughing a lot during Heartbreaker but I sure was smiling.

By Brian Lafferty

September 17, 2010 (San Diego)--The Town opens with Ben Affleck and his crew robbing a bank. The action here is standard but one shot stands out. Rebecca Hall, playing a Bank Manager, is forced to open the safe. She shakes as she tries several times to get the correct combination. She’s under pressure because the cops are on their way and because she has a gun to her head. She finally manages to get it open. This looked promising; Affleck, who also directed and co-wrote, shows a knack for directing suspense despite the otherwise ordinary robbery.

By Brian Lafferty

September 13, 2010 (San Diego) -- Today I will venture out into the Realm of the Off Topic. What follows is not exactly movie-related but I feel compelled to talk about the last few weeks and how they have affected me. I’m sure some of you may feel the same way I do after reading this post.

By Brian Lafferty

September 12, 2010 (San Diego)--A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop is not a bad movie per se but an unnecessary one. I could easily apply that label to a lot of bad movies but usually every movie, even the real stinkers, starts out conceptually with the best of intentions. This newest film by Yimou Zhang, a remake of the Coen Brothers’ film Blood Simple had no reason to be made.

ON THE SILVER SCREEN: PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1 A SATISFYING CONCLUSION TO MESRINE SAGA

By Brian Lafferty

September 6, 2010 (San Diego)--Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1, released last Friday, is the second of a two-part series. Killer Instinct emphasized action while this one focuses more on character exploration. Vince Cassel showed us in the first movie how he could rob banks. The movie contains action but not as much as the first. Instead, Cassel is given the opportunity to flex his acting muscles this time around, giving us a glimpse of one of France’s most notorious outlaws when he’s not on his latest crime spree. It is here that we get a portrait of the criminal artist as an older man.

By Brian Lafferty

August 27, 2010 (San Diego)--The movie may be called Takers but “Sharp Dressed Men” would be a more apt title. The Takers in this movie are a group of men who get their kicks robbing banks but there is very little of it. Instead, we see only a group of men dressed in expensive suits strutting around, acting cool, and emitting a subtext that says, “Look how much money we have to afford these coats and ties!” At some point I wished ZZ Top’s hit song, “Sharp Dressed Man” would blare to lighten things up a little.