Sam Rockwell

Laggies

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Laggies
  • IMDb: link

Laggies

Director Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies is an odd film that attempts to blend character study with rom-com tropes. It lacks the satiric wit and humorous mean-spiritedness of Young Adult but plays on similar themes of a protagonist struggling to grow-up. Andrea Seigel‘s script is kept afloat in its weaker moments thanks to an engaging performance by its star and a clear message about the struggles of finding oneself as an adult and the odd paths we take to get there.

As all her high school friends have gotten older, married, and started careers and families, Megan (Keira Knightley) is still living with her equally-procrastinistic high school boyfriend (Mark Webber) and working for her father (Jeff Garlin) in a dead-end job twirling a sign by the side of the road. The marriage of two friends, a proposal by her boyfriend, and the discover of her father’s extramarital affairs, all push Megan over the edge one night seeking comfort in the simpler problems of a high school student (Chloë Grace Moretz) and her friends.

Lying to her boyfriend about attending a life seminar, Megan disappears for a week moving in with Annika (Moretz) and her father (Sam Rockwell) who is thrown off guard by the entire bizarre relationship.

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Cowboys and Aliens

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Cowboys and Aliens
  • IMDB: link

cowboys-and-aliens-posterIt begins with a cowboy waking up in the desert with no memory of who he is and ends with cowboys and Indians fighting aliens for gold. Yeah, you heard me, gold.

Although I enjoyed it, with a title like Cowboys and Aliens I expected the film to be a little zanier, goofier, and far more of a fun summer popcorn flick. What director Jon Favreau delivers is entertaining, at times, but it also feels unimaginative and uninspired.

After waking up in the desert without any memories, Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) makes his way to the nearest town. Almost immediately he gets into a tussle with the son (Paul Dano) of the town’s wealthiest man (Harrison Ford), is thrown in jail for a train robbery, and shoots down a giant alien spacecraft with a strange metal bracelet attached to his arm. You know, just your everyday activities in the Old West.

When several of the townsfolk are taken Jake is roped into helping rescue them as well as a woman (Abigail Spencer) from his past he thinks may have been taken as well.

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Delivered with Conviction

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Conviction
  • IMDB: link

Conviction is based on a true story about a man (Sam Rockwell) wrongly convicted and sentenced to life in prison for a murder he did not commit. His sister (Hilary Swank), beginning her quest without even a high school diploma, spends the next several years of her life raising her two sons and struggling through college and law school to become the lawyer her brother needs. What may sound like a bad TV-movie of the week turns out to be so much more.

Screenwiter Pamela Gray and dirctor Tony Goldwyn deserve a fair amount of credit for finding a way to share this story without over-simplifying events or falling into an all too easy trap of caricature and cliché.

The film’s central core is the relationship between a brother and sister who love, rely, protect and never give up on each other. It’s the strong performances of Swank and Rockwell (as well as Bailee Madison and Tobias Campbell as their younger selves) that grounds the film as a compelling drama rather than just a feel good story about one woman’s fight against insurmountable odds.

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Iron Man 2

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Iron Man 2
  • IMDB: link

Six months after revealing himself as Iron Man, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has become a national hero. Not everything is all sunny in the life of the world’s newest hero, however. As Iron Man 2 opens Stark is facing multiple problems including health issues tied to his use of the arc reactor, a push by the U.S. Senate to get their hands on the Iron Man technology for military use, a competitor (Sam Rockwell) wanting to steal limelight for himself, and the son (Mickey Rourke) of Howard Stark’s business partner out for revenge.

That’s a lot of plot to squeeze into two-hours, and I haven’t even mentioned Pepper Potts’ (Gwyneth Paltrow) new role as CEO of Stark Industries, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and S.H.I.E.L.D., James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) and the creation of War Machine, or Stark’s new assistant (Scarlett Johansson) who has a few skills not listed on her resume.

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Frost/Nixon

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Frost/Nixon
  • IMDB: link

“What made you exceptional, they said, was that you were a person who had achieved great fame without possessing any discernible quality.”

Sometimes it takes David to bring down Goliath.  David Frost (Michael Sheen) was a likable talk-show host who mortgaged his future and career with an interview with former President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella).  Nixon, in need of money and a change in his public perception, agreed to the interview with the man whom his aide (Kevin Bacon) stated simply “isn’t in your league.”

After an intial montage summing up the Watergate scandal, the film follows Frost on his journey to land, finance, and prepare for the interviews which would almost break him, all while the rest of the world looked on and laughed.

Sheen (The Queen, Music Within) once again gives a great performance on which the film rests.  Over the last two years he’s become one of my favorite actors working today.

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