The summer 2013 movie season is now upon us with a barrage of sequels being released like Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness. But there is one sequel in particular which many movie fans are eagerly awaiting even if it doesn’t have the budget of a summer blockbuster, and that’s Before Midnight. The third in a series of movies that began in 1995 with Before Sunrise, it reunites filmmaker Richard Linklater with actors and co-writers Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy who reprise their roles of Jesse and Celine.
There’s a lot to be said about the look of Epic, which is quite amazing. Reportedly, the animation artists spent thousands upon thousands of hours working on this movie and that’s not hard to believe. Much of the CG animation looks quite life-like at times. But while the movie is great to look at, it gives us a story which is less than inspired and not all that different from those good vs. evil tales we all grew up on.
Sarah Polley is an amazing actress, but now she is proving to be an amazing filmmaker as well. Her third film, Stories We Tell, marks the first documentary she has ever made, but it also deals with the same themes Away From Her and Take This Waltz dealt with as well: the troubles faced in long standing relationships as well as issues with memories and truth. It also proves to be a genre-twisting film as Sarah uses different methods to get at the truth surrounding a very important person in her life, her mother Diane.
We have all come to love Sarah Polley as an actress in films such as The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica and Zack Snyder’s remake of Dawn of the Dead, but in the past few years she has proven to be as big a talent behind the camera as she is in front of it. While many actors can have an awkward time going from acting in a movie to directing one, Polley made one of the most confident and assured feature-length directorial debuts with Away From Her, which earned its star Julie Christie an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Polley then went on to direct last year’s Take This Waltz which starred Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen as a married couple that wonders if they’re truly satisfied with the state of their relationship.
It feels like it’s been awhile since we have seen Keanu Reeves star in anything. His last big movie was The Day The Earth Stood Still back in 2008, and since then he has been laying low and starring mostly in independent films like The Private Lives of Pippa Lee and Henry’s Crime. There's also the time that he has spending trying to finish up 47 Ronin, which has been delayed countless times on its way to the silver screen. This month, Reeves will appear on the big screen in Generation Um…, a movie that marks the feature film directorial debut of American photographic artist Mark Mann.
Despite strong performances from Keanu Reeves, Bojana Novakovic and Adelaide Clemens, Generation Um... doesn't give us enough of a story to keep us fully invested throughout its running time.
Olga Kurylenko may not be an A-list talent just yet, but she's definitely starting to prove herself amongst the Hollywood elite. After earning a role as the Bond girl in Quantum of Solace, she went onto grab roles in To The Wonder, Seven Psychopaths and Centurion. Now, with serious buzz surrounding her name and many in the industry starting to sit up and take notice of the Ukrainian born actress, her latest film, Oblivion, is about to make its way into theatres.
Filmmaker Joseph Kosinski follows up his directorial debut, TRON: Legacy, with an even more ambitious science fiction film, Oblivion. It takes place in a distant future where aliens have shattered the Moon, which in turn nearly destroyed Earth, and Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) spends his days repairing drones that are designed to protect the planet from another alien invasion. But one day Jack meets up with a mysterious woman named Julia Rusakova (Olga Kurylenko) who alerts him to a past he wasn’t aware he had, and he soon calls into question all that he was led to believe in.
Morgan Freeman has almost reached the status of "legendary" actor at this point. The man has given us so many great performances over the course of his career. Films like Street Smart, The Shawshank Redemption, Se7en, Driving Miss Daisy, The Dark Knight and Million Dollar Baby, which finally earned him the Oscar he deserved for the longest time, have more than proven his worth.
What Maisie Knew is one of the most fascinating and original cinematic portrayals of a child living through their parents’ divorce ever made. Based on the novel by Henry James, it updates the events of the story to the modern day world of New York City and puts us right into the mindset of young Maisie (Onata Aprile) as she quickly becomes the victim of her parents’ selfish desires. While we know that children are the ones who are hurt most by divorce, the fascinating thing about this film is how this little girl becomes even more mature than the two adults who should be doing a far better job of raising her.
