Mr. Popcorn (mrpopcorn)

"When the truth is found to be lies, and all the hope within you dies..."

A black comedy set in 1967 and centered on Larry Gopnik, a Midwestern professor who watches his life unravel when his wife prepares to leave him because his inept brother won't move out of the house.

REVIEW
"The Book Of Job" meets "Fiddler On The Roof" in this very Jewish, very funny, very opaque and thought-provoking work from brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. There is never a boring moment in a superb movie which opens with a Yiddish-language tale set in 19th century Poland, works through one personal problem after another after another, three anxiety dreams and three encounters with rabbis with ever-larger reputations for wisdom and ever more gnomic utterances, and concludes with a final joke in the very last screen of credits. The Coen brothers have gone back to their adolescent years with a narrative set in a Jewish community in Minnesota in 1967 which dissects the Semitic lifestyle and belief system while posing challenging questions about duality and uncertainty.

The eponymous character is played by the previously unheralded Michael Stuhlbarg who is rarely off the screen and who, as the hapless Larry Gopnick, (most of the time) demonstrates remarkable patience and resilience in the face of repeated assaults on his efforts as a husband, father, brother, and teacher while he attempts to be "a serious man". It is a kind of Kafkaresque dreamworld with a cruel sense of humour where nothing works out quite as it should and the end brings both a physical and metaphorical storm. You'll be debating the meaning of it all long after you've enjoyed its richly-layered story, but the Coen brothers themselves offer - with a heavy dose of irony - the advice of the wise 12th century Jewish scholar Rashi: "Receive with simplicity all the things that happen to you".

"Every family has a rebel. Even the First Family."

Anna Foster has never had an ordinary life. At eighteen years old, she is the most protected girl in America; she is the First Daughter...

REVIEW
One wonders if the makers of this film didn't ever find out another movie about the same subject was also being released at about the same time as this one, "First Daughter". Obviously, this is a film targeted to young girls who will, without a doubt, love it. Andy Cadiff, its director, doesn't add anything new to the formula these movies follow and the result, while not unpleasant, leaves us with a feeling we have seen it all before.

The film becomes a great travelogue where Anna, the daughter of the American president escapes from Prague with a young man she has met and seems to like. They are supposed to go to Berlin, but obviously, they take the train going south and end up in Venice! Oh well, leave it to the creators of the movie to take the cute Anna all over the continent trying to find herself.

Mandy Moore is a young actress that could do better. One hopes she is not typecast into these young girl she seems to play. The others in the movie do an adequate job. The film best asset the great exteriors one sees throughout the length of the movie.

"Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free." Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency. REVIEW It is very hard to think of something bad about this film.The direction is incredible, bringing about highly memorable performances, and a beautifully shot film. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are sensational, carrying this film on their shoulders as if it were the easiest job in the world - a tribute to them as this film must have been an incredibly demanding shoot - it is a long and emotional film. The development of their friendship is wonderful to watch, as is Andy's gradual assimilation into the prison society - however sad it may well be. Frank Darabont it seems was the ideal man to take the helm of this movie. Many films in this sort of genre can feel like they are missing something, as if there were sections left on the editing room floor - not this film, everything fits perfectly in to place. This leads to a very long film, (which could perhaps be its only criticism - be warned it is long - though the longer the better for me) but one which sucks you right into the prison world, and keeps you right there until the utterly stunning last shot of the film! Viewers should be warned that some scenes are of a disturbing nature, dealing with issues that may offend some people. However, this should not put you off seeing this film. It deals with the realities of prison, and in no way glorifies the goings on. What we must realise however, is that this film is not necessarily about the brutality of prison and the way prison society operates, it is about human connection and interaction, and the indomitable nature of the human spirit. By the last scene we should feel uplifted at what has been achieved - not only by the characters in the story however, but by the film makers!

"Where's Olive?" A family determined to get their young daughter into the finals of a beauty pageant take a cross-country trip in their VW bus. REVIEW Much of "Little Miss Sunshine" shouldn't work, yet almost all of it does. One of the best ensemble casts in recent memory delivers this outrageous material with a tremendous amount of heart and conviction and, as a result, a screenplay that threatens to stretch the bounds of credibility comes across as believable and achingly poignant. The characters are given such strong motivations for their actions that everything they do and say feels utterly plausible, even when the film itself threatens to teeter into Faulknerian Southern Gothic crossed with National Lampoon's "Vacation." The writers, director and cast stubbornly refuse to allow us any tidy character assessments. Therefore, we see the brittle and harsh side of Toni Collette's otherwise loving mom; the warm, charming and please-like-me vulnerability of Greg Kinnear's otherwise smarmy and nearly intolerable dad; the intellectual pompousness and snobbery that peeks its head through Steve Carell's otherwise emotionally wounded suicide case; and the affectionate patriarch lurking behind the otherwise gruff and offensive exterior of Alan Arkin's grandfather, whose greatest crime may be that he's too honest. "Little Miss Sunshine" hands over this motley cast of characters and lets us glory in their imperfections, and through doing so helps us feel better about our own. As the movie points out, perfection isn't possible, and the aggressive pressure in American culture to achieve it is only making people miserable about failing at something they never had a chance of succeeding at in the first place. The movie is so warm hearted though, that its ultimate lesson isn't a downer. At the end, this close-knit family realizes that they're proud to be ordinary, and dammit, so am I.