This Is 40

How to be a “Feel Good Movie”, “This Is 40” style:

Create two miserable characters, unhappily married to each other. Show in great detail all the miserable facets of their unhappy relationship… the lack of personal space, the unfulfilled wishes, the financial pressures, the ridiculous demands they place on each other, and then show them argue about these things. At length. Constantly. Then show how miserable that this is making the couple’s children. Then show the irresponsible parents that caused these two to grow up miserably, and how they’re still making the couple miserable. Finally, your audience will be miserable after watching two hours of nonstop arguing and misery and complaining about being miserable.

Then, when the credits roll… it will feel SO good.

The 2012 Holiday Movie Season Preview

Ok, folks, here we are! One of the major movie release seasons of the year is upon us, The Holiday Movie Season!

The Holidays started a little early this year, with “Skyfall” (undeniably a major release) opening in the first week of November. So we’re underway! Between now and the end of the year, we’ll see some of the biggest films on the 2012 docket get released, including the conclusion to the “Twilight” Saga, “The Hobbit”, and “Django Unchained”!

Click through to check out what the Holidays hold in store!

The 2011 FMR MAJOR Award Winner for Best Supporting Actor

Ok boys and girls, this post announces the winner of the Best Supporting Actor MAJOR Award for 2011.

I put up five actors who I felt contributed the most to their films in spite of a limited amount of screen time. They weren’t the leads, but they made a fantastic contribution to their film.

The nominees are: Albert Brooks, “Drive”, Robert Forster, “The Descendants”, Paul Giamatti, “The Ides of March”, Nick Nolte, “Warrior”, and Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”.

Click “Continue Reading” to see who won!

Movies That Everyone Should See: “Taxi Driver”

“Taxi Driver” was released in February of 1976.

America was a country with a deeply wounded psyche at the time. The President was Gerald Ford, who had been Richard Nixon’s Vice President throughout the Watergate scandal. The sentencings of Nixon’s White House aides, along with John Mitchell, the former Attorney General of the United States, were not even 12 months removed. The summer prior, America had lost a war for the first time. The country watched as Saigon fell, and people scrambled to abandon the US Embassy.

America needed a hero.

Instead, Martin Scorsese gave us Travis Bickle…

Drive

“Drive” was an excellent, high calibre, praiseworthy movie experience.

Directed with confidence and style by newcomer to American cinema Nicolas Winding Refn,  drive is the best movie I’ve seen in theatres this year by a longshot, and most certainly will be in discussion for movie of the year here, if not the actual Oscars.

In fact, the only real criticism I have of it is that there were several times during the film I found myself wondering if I was watching a film that was going to register amongst the greats, if I was meeting a new film to my personal top fifty for the first time. It never quite got there, but I think the best way to present that isn’t to put that out there negatively, but to put it out there positively.

This is a film that flirts with greatness.