Happy Feet Two – 3 1/2 Buckets

Often when critics often chastise a film for valuing “style over substance,” that’s not what their actual problem with the film is. Let’s consider some recent examples where the criticism was most popularly applied: Transformers 3… [Read more]

Burn After Reading – 1 Bucket

There are those who have never quite been on Joel and Ethan Coen’s wavelength in terms of comedy, but I’m not in that group. In fact, I’m as big a Coen Brothers fan as anybody; I even dug their critically-lambasted Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. But I flat-out didn’t get why 95 percent of the material in [...]

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – 3 Buckets

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, like its title, is beautiful in its sprawling state but, also like its title, could have greatly benefited from being chopped in half. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with the movie running for nearly three hours—its cinematography, score, and performances always engage—but the endless time-limit [...]