Posted on June 23, 2008 at 8:00 am
The best-selling series of books about children who find their mysterious old house surrounded by magical creatures has been turned into a visually sumptuous treat for fans of fantasy and imagination.
Freddie Highmore (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Posted on June 9, 2008 at 8:00 am
Take away the sumptuous settings and Hollywood glamour and what you have here is like Henry VIII for Dummies enacted by the cast of the OC.
Natalie Portman plays Anne Boleyn, who became the second of Henry VIII’s six wives and the mother of Queen Elizabeth I. When Anne arrived at court, Henry was married to a much-older Spanish princess who had been the wife of his late brother. She was unable to produce a male heir, and the impetuous king was vulnerable to the plotting of courtiers who deployed their female family members for power and money. The Boleyn family had two daughters. Mary (Scarlett Johansson), the quiet one who married young and wanted a simple life in the country, caught the king’s eye and became his mistress. Anne, the headstrong one who wanted to be more than a mistress, ended up sundering not only a marriage but Britain’s ties to the Catholic church. She became queen, but like her predecessor (and three of the four wives who followed) she did not produce a male heir. She was beheaded on charges of treason, adultery, and incest.
Posted on May 15, 2008 at 3:00 pm
B| Lowest Recommended Age: | High School |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated R for some sexuality. |
| Profanity: | Some strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, smoking |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Holocaust/wartime violence, sad deaths |
| Diversity Issues: | A theme of the movie |
| Date Released to Theaters: | May 16, 2008 |
In this impressionistic, rose-and honey-toned memory piece, young Jacob hides from the Nazis in 1941 Poland but his parents are killed and his sister is captured. The terrified boy is discovered by a Greek archaeologist, who takes him in and becomes a gentle, devoted surrogate father. Over the years, Jacob (played as an adult by Stephen Dillane) tries to make sense of his past and his present.
He becomes a writer and marries the warm-hearted Alex (Rosamund Pike). But he continues to carry the ghosts of his past and she realizes that limits his ability to be close to her. “To live with ghosts requires solitude,†she tells him.
Jacob will have to endure additional losses to put his past in context and to find a way to make a deeper, more trusting connection. While it does not have the lyricism of the book’s limpid prose, it is a moving story, gently and sincerely told.
Posted on May 7, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Hillary Swank does not have the chin for romance or the rhythm for comedy. Her two Oscars were for earnest, androgynous roles (“Boys Don’t Cry” and “Million Dollar Baby”) that made the most of her strong jaw and lanky figure. Romantic comedies, even bittersweet ones about perky young widows learning to go on with their lives, need twinkle. Her character wears twinkly dresses and does twinkly things, but Swank delivers her lines as though she is still slamming into that heavy bag.
Posted on April 22, 2008 at 6:00 pm
It is not easy to take a wealthy socialite, a powerful Congressman, and a CIA agent, have them played by three Oscar-winners, two who are genuine box office gold, and make them look like the underdogs, but in this “extraordinary story of how the wildest man in Congress and a rogue CIA agent changed the history of our times” (as put in the unusually accurate book subtitle), that is what they are.
