Epinions Recent Reviews for mrbrown

MORE than a basketball story

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:33:00 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - The title More Than a Game is more than a little cliché, and the most basic summary of this documentary's premise does little to refute that initial impression: the story of five inner city youths who forge something beyond friendship while...

Dreamgirls: big screen spectacle at its most exhilarating

Mon, 1 Jan 2007 23:46:34 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - Films that see release at this time of year usually fall into one of two categories: (1) pretentious awards bait or (2) pure entertainers. Hardly usual is the case where something comes along that fulfills one's desire for a rousing, exhilarating...

Lady in the Water: The 'Lady' Drowns

Sat, 22 Jul 2006 13:21:06 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - It would be easy to glibly dismiss M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water as an epic trainwreck--and, indeed, it is. So let's get all of that out of the way: it's one of the most astonishing, embarrassing, misbegotten misfires from a name brand...

Waist Deep: 'Waist Deep' in pretension

Thu, 6 Jul 2006 05:21:05 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - In his film's rather effective initial stages, director/co-writer Vondie Curtis Hall takes the title Waist Deep to heart, wasting no time--foregoing a single title card, even--throwing paroed con Otis, a.k.a. "O2" (Tyrese Gibson) into a precarious...

Superman Returns: Richard Donner Returns

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 22:41:26 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - When it was announced that Bryan Singer would be tackling the long-in-the-works big screen return of Superman, both film and comic fan alike eagerly anticipated what he would come up with--after all, this is the same filmmaker who was able to make...

The Promise: Broken 'Promise'

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 21:36:39 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - The tangled, torturous path traveled by The Promise, mainland China's official 2005 entry into the Foreign Language Film Oscar race, on its way to American screens (or, rather, one) is, in itself, its own epic drama. Originally picked up for...

A 'Rent' shortfall

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 17:00:57 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - My immediate reaction upon exiting the long-in-the-works film adaptation of the late Jonathan Larson's award-winning stage musical Rent was that I liked it--not a surprise, considering that I would be one of those fans labeled a "Renthead."...

'Rent' upgraded for the millennium

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:34:09 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - Much like how the first teaser trailer seemed to serve as a reassurance for faithful fans that Chris Columbus's screen adaptation of Rent was on the right track, so does the remarkably early release of the full soundtrack album, which Warner Bros...

Making a joyful noise

Sun, 16 Oct 2005 18:45:36 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - With a title like The Gospel, it would be easy to peg Rob Hardy's faith-themed drama to be a piece of exclusionary, preach-to-the-converted propaganda. But the writer-director manages to achieve the tricky feat of creating a film that...

A rough 'Ride' worth taking

Wed, 7 Sep 2005 14:53:03 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - Rel Dowdell's Train Ride can easily be pigeonholed into a number of simply-defined categories. College film. Issue film. Low-budget film. Black film. Independent film. Direct-to-DVD release. While all of these descriptions do apply, to...

Tripping Over the Light 'Fantastic'

Mon, 11 Jul 2005 17:22:24 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - The good news: Fox's much-dreaded feature film adaptation of Marvel's venerable "world's greatest comic magazine," Fantastic Four, is not the awesomely awful catastrophe all early indications suggested. What it is, however, is still far from...

Belabored, befuddled besmirchment of beloved 'Bewitched'

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 02:00:43 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - Bewitched proves once and for all that Nora Ephron has no idea what she's doing behind the camera--that is, unless she's pointing it at Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. While she has directed far worse films than this "reimagining" of the classic televion...

'Straight from the Heart' of Bollywood

Tue, 7 Jun 2005 06:17:27 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - Three years prior to D
evdas,
director Sanjay Leela Bhansali and leading lady Aishwarya Rai first teamed up for another lavishly mounted epic love story, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (literally Darling, I...

Hustlers and hos and their 'Hustle & Flow'

Mon, 6 Jun 2005 03:02:49 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - "Everybody gotta have a dream." That such a banal statement at face value can come to mean something far more profound and inspiring is reflective of the feat writer-director Craig Brewer achieves with Hustle & Flow. In fact, the title pretty...

Aishwarya Rai finally conquers the West with 'Bride & Prejudice'

Tue, 1 Mar 2005 21:48:07 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - Indian film goddess Aishwarya Rai's first English language film, the Jane Austen-meets-Bollywood musical comedy Bride & Prejudice, seems designed for the express purpose of capturing Tinseltown's attention--and on that end, the film is undoubtedly...

'Hide' from this movie

Tue, 1 Mar 2005 21:23:42 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - While this January certainly hasn't been lacking the cinematic suck, it hasn't had that classically distastrous, so-amazingly-awful-as-to-be-co
mic-gold
type of suck--that is, until the final weekend of the month, with the release of Hide and Seek...

Alone in the Dark (2004): 'Dark'-ness falls

Tue, 1 Mar 2005 21:17:39 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - I doubt the minds--using that term very loosely--behind Alone in the Dark had hysterical laughter in mind with this video game-based sci-fi/horror actioner. But then I can imagine them having a good laugh at their financiers' expense, for I can't...

Get 'Hitch'-ed with Will

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 22:58:40 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - Will Smith has proven to be such an immensely charismatic, easily likable, and effortlessly charming star in a variety of media, I always wondered why no one ever thought to cast him as a romantic lead. Now, after finally seeing him extend these...

'Coach'-ing the game of life

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 02:11:16 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - As they always say in sports--particularly on the grade school level--whether win or lose, it's how you play the game. The same can be applied to the formula-ridden genre of the sports movie, as Thomas Carter's high school basketball drama Coach...

'Elektra'-cution

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 02:04:59 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - Elektra certainly appeared to be a can't-miss proposition: a spin-off of the financially successful 2003 screen adaptation of Daredevil, focusing on what was considered one of the best things about the film; a headlining vehicle for rising...

'White Noise' = blank screen

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 01:59:01 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - As if being the very first wide release of the movie wasteland known as January didn't already make it critical cannon fodder, not only does the title of White Noise provide more easy ammunition, so does the name of the director. Geoffrey Sax?...

'Closer' to the vest than each other

Sun, 26 Dec 2004 11:10:57 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - The title of Closer has been called ambiguous by Patrick Marber, writer of Mike Nichols's film and the play on which it's based, but that word and all of its enigmatic connotations perfectly sum up the characters, relationships and motivations in...

'Spanglish' finds James L. Brooks speaking in tongues

Thu, 23 Dec 2004 09:49:07 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - Writer-director James L. Brooks's name is usually enough to get awards voters to sit up and take notice, if not pre-mark their ballots (after all, how else to explain Helen Hunt's 1997 Best Actress Oscar for his As Good as It Gets?), and no doubt...

The Kevin Spacey Variety Hour

Mon, 20 Dec 2004 20:13:58 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - There was once a man who wanted nothing more than to move the world through song and dance, and that man's name is... Kevin Spacey. What, you thought Beyond the Sea was about Bobby Darin, the singer/songwriter/actor who made the titular tune a...

A 'Dagger' to the heart

Sun, 19 Dec 2004 23:04:29 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mrbrown - Since my first viewing of it way back in the first week of September, Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers has gotten under my skin and lingered there like no other film this year, and subsequent viewings (at this writing, two more and counting)...