Movie Review: The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000)

This “golf as life” allegory works like a champ

The Legend of Bagger VanceRannulph Junuh: Grow up Hardy!
Hardy Greaves: It ain’t time for me to
grow up, Mr. Junuh.
Rannulph Junuh: You’re daddy is out sweeping streets because he took every last dime he had, and used it to pay up every man and woman he owed and every business who worked for him, instead of declaring bankruptcy like everyone else in town, including your best friend Wilbur Charles’ dad, Raymond, which is why he’s able to sit around all day long on his dignity! Your daddy stared adversity in the eye, Hardy. And he beat it back with a broom. Continue reading

Movie Review: We Bought a Zoo (2011)

Family fare with a Waltonian pickmeup _ 8/10
Review by Brian Wright

We Bought a ZooBenjamin Mee: You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.

Lily Miska: [to Kelly during the opening of the zoo] If you had to choose between people and animals, who would you pick?
[Kelly doesn't answer]
Lily Miska: Me, too. People! Continue reading

Movie Review: Hereafter (2010)

Humanitarian exploration of afterlife ___ 9/10
Review by Brian Wright

HereafterDirected by Clint Eastwood
Written by Peter Morgan

On the surface, Hereafter is a fairly straightforward story of two individuals—George Lonegan (Matt Damon) and Marie LeLay (Cécile De France)—who have near-death experiences that result in special understanding that seemingly drives them toward each other across the continents. But their internal struggles with having a unique ability to ‘see in the world of the dead,’ the characters with whom they pass through their lives, and strangers who are drawn to them—particularly to Lonegan, who has reluctantly spent some time in the psychic market—make the film a complex tapestry of, usually benign, behavior.

Continue reading