Elevate Difference

Reviews of Sony Pictures Classics

Made in Dagenham

I am not much for plays. I generally prefer to sit bundled in my comforter, wine in hand, and watch a movie. However, I was recently convinced by a friend to join her for Mrs. Warren’s Profession, the main attraction of which was Sally Hawkins. I know Sally Hawkins only from Happy-Go-Lucky where her cheerfulness, tireless as the Sony synopsis describes, was also guileless and irritating.

A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop

I walked out of the screening of A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop feeling vaguely dissatisfied. While the official selection of the 2010 Berlin Film Festival bills itself as a “black comedy thriller [which serves] as an expose of how intense desires can consume humanity,” it neither thrills nor tickles the funny bone.

Micmacs

After running through a gauntlet of elevators and security guards at the Sony Tower in midtown Manhattan, I entered a small screening room to see the French film Micmacs.

Get Low

Robert Duvall. Sissy Spacek. Bill Murray. If that’s not an easy sell, I’m not entirely sure what film would be. As expected, the acting in Get Low is phenomenal across the board. Even up and comer Lucas Black more than holds his own with these legends. The acting is the magic the movie tries so hard to make. Unfortunately, the allure of the fanciful southern folktale misses the mark. There are magic moments but Get Low fails to sustain itself consistently.

The White Ribbon

Once I watched Casablanca on television two times in a month. One more time, and I think I would have started believing the film was sending me messages.

Coco Before Chanel

Spoiler Alert Prior to seeing this movie, I associated Coco Chanel with couture fashion and high society women with size two figures, like Audrey Hepburn and Nancy Reagan. Coco Before Chanel introduces us to the woman Chanel was before revolutionizing women’s fashion and becoming a fashion icon to the rich, famous and not so famous.

Easy Virtue

To say that Stephan Elliott was taken aback when approached to direct Easy Virtue would be an understatement. Asking the man behind the beloved drag queen road movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert to adapt a Noel Coward play didn’t exactly seem logical. But the producers of the film insisted there was a method to their madness.

Every Little Step

Despite the fact that I have lived in Manhattan for over six years, I have never once gone to a Broadway show. In fact, I make it a point to keep away from the theater district, period. I don’t much care for the stylized (read: exaggerated) performance style that theater actors have to adopt in order to make themselves seen and heard from the nosebleed seats.

Synecdoche, New York

It sucked. Any other questions? Okay, I know all the reviewers are raving. My husband raved (and I’ll let him justify that on his blog). I suspect the reviewers are raving because that’s what they think they’re supposed to do. It’s a deep and serious movie. It’s existentialist! It’s about the meaning of life!

Volver

What does it mean to have a dead mother come back to life and nurture her daughters and granddaughter again? Well that is in the meaning of the film’s title, Volver, which means to recapture again, in this case, the love that went missing years before.
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