Movie Review | 'A Good Year': Stopping to Smell the VintnerÂs Bouquet
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"A Good Year," an innocuous, feel-good movie that reunites Russell Crowe with the director Ridley Scott, is a three-P movie: pleasant, pretty and predictable. One might add piddling.
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While âRolling Like a Stoneâ has poignant and funny moments, itâs a serious film about mortality, success and the ephemeral nature of experience and memory.
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The new movie "Sideways" treats the subject of wine fluently and accurately, with just the right proportions of satire and respect.
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Okay, a few days ago I wrote a review of the Diving Bell and the Butterfly saying it could be the best picture of 2007, but even so you might want to skip it because the truth it reveals might be something you don't want to look at. It's a fine picture, but a tough one. Another wonderful but tough picture is No Country for Old Men. It's one of those movies that leaves so much unresolved that you walk out of the theater not sure which foot goes in front of the other. On a second viewing it makes much more sense. The world isn't necessarily as crazy as it at first seemed. But there's a movie that is also incredibly well crafted, and gets better every time you think about it -- Juno. I didn't realize how much I liked it until I heard someone compare it to Little Miss Sunshine, a movie that I did not enjoy, unlike everyone else it seems. I loved Juno because it organizes its sweetness into love for one person, the star of the movie, Juno. But everyone, no matter how dorky or clueless (and some of the adults are truly dorky and clueless) shares the love. The movie has a wholeness, an unqualified goodness, you not only walk out of the theater in love with Juno and everyone else in the movie, but your heart is warmed for everyone, including yourself. It's that good.  All three remind how good movies can be. And there were some not-too-bad movies at the end of 2007, for example, Atonement, which some didn't like, but I did. 3:10 to Yuma is a well-crafted genre picture. Michael Clayton was a perfect showcase for the talents of George Clooney. Great acting and a simple story in The Savages.  Which one was the best? I'd hate to have to choose!
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In what's been a good year for foreign films, France offers up two more but only one is truly dreamy
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Life's big celebrations -- weddings, graduations, and, of course, New Year's Eve -- will probably always call for crisp champagne.
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Robert Altman's wild and unruly 1978 film "A Wedding," which grew out of an ill-tempered comment he made 30 years ago, has now become a full-fledged opera.
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Fine wine isn't the only  thing that gets better with age.
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One film that caught the fancy of just about everyone at the recently
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And the Oscar for Hollywood's word  of the year goes to "pinot," as in pinot noir, the wine variety  of choice in "Sideways," one the five films nominated this year  for a best picture Academy Award.
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The ability to discern good wine from bad, name the specific brand from a tiny sip and recommend a complementary cheese would seem to be about as human a skill as there is. In Japan, robots are doing it.
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It's the story of the season: Trim about a half-hour and you could turn a good movie into a great one.
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Jennifer Hudson, who went from  little-known performer to Oscar winner in the past year, has a  new role: representing a perfume.
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This sweet-natured coming-of-age story manages a neat trick in our increasingly ``edge&#39;&#39;-obsessed television world: It&#39;s old-fashioned without seeming irrelevant.
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You heard it here first, folks: 2004 is the year of the romance. It&#39;s September, and while there&#39;s still the big Oscar push to go, so far the movies that have really stuck out, the movies that
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Itâs been a good year for old-movie buffs. The DVD industry continued to mature in 2007; diminishing returns on newly produced films led both the big studios and the boutique labels back to the archives. Rapid advances in digital restoration techniques and a concerted attempt to return to original release material produced some amazingly handsome new versions of familiar films (âThe Jazz Singer,â âNosferatuâ), as well as neglected gems (âKiller of Sheep,â âTrue Heart Susieâ).
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This year Oscar was deluged with so many good foreign films, they didn't have room to nominate all the good ones.