Imagine a time when every day is the 4th of July and every night is New Year’s Eve. Imagine a place filled with manic energy and garish opulence. Welcome to the first half of The Great Gatsby. This is really a story in two parts – one fueled by grand decadence, one told on a more human scale.
“You can’t get to my age without some regrets,” Sharon (Susan Sarandon) says. “But I would do it all again. Better. Smarter. I would do it all again.” This is a movie about lives led and lies told, choices made and secrets kept.
Dino, I don’t think we’re in Bedrock anymore. I went to The Croods expecting an update of The Flintstones – and got something else entirely. What we have here is a stylish and sophisticated work of animation.
In the Movie Bible according to Michael Bay, this movie’s director, the first – maybe only – commandment is this: Thou shalt do everything to excess or thou shalt not bother doing it at all.
Here is a quote from this film, spoken by Tom Cruise’s character, Jack Harper. It gives you an idea of what we’re dealing with: “If we have souls, they're made of the love we share. Undimmed by time, unbound by death.”
The plot is a bit preposterous and some of the violence is way, way over the top, but this is actually a well made, if copycat movie. It will remind you of so many others – the original Die Hard comes to mind – but the movie does get you thinking about the kind of decisions the President (or, in this case, the ‘acting President’) has to make – and for the first time in a very long time, I actually liked Gerard Butler in a role.
Mud is a tale of elemental things -- falling in love, and putting your faith in others, and spending summer days with your best friend when you’re fourteen years old.
Like the paintings Pierre-Auguste Renoir created, this is a movie filled with visual splendor.
I usually use this space for announcements about projects I am shooting or screenings of films I have shot. But I have had so much interest in my camera tests for the new Sony F55, that I wanted to share my results publicly.
In the 1990s The Shooting Gallery produced some of the hottest indie films, including Sling Blade (an Academy Award for Billy Bob Thornton), You Can Count On Me starring Mark Ruffalo (Academy Award nomination) and a series of projects with now-famous actors, producers and directors. Not long ago, director/producers Whitney Ransick and Bob Gosse, along with DP/producer Gil Gilbert and his co-DP Derek Wiesehahn, chronicled the rise and fall of this industry icon in Misfire: The Rise and Fall of The Shooting Gallery.
