Buddha's Rhubarb Of Opinions On Media

Glib Reviews of Recent DVD/Blu Ray releases Mississippi Grind Directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck Decent buddy flick/road picture from directorial tandem of Fleck and Boden. Ben Mendelsohn and Ryan Reynolds have some real bro-chemistry, as an older/younger gambling team. Mendelsohn’s Gerry really personifies someone who rarely knows when to quit while he’s ahead. His desperation and addiction to one more hand, one more dice roll, is palpable in pretty much every decision the character makes. Why Reynolds’ obnoxiously charismatic Curtis gloms onto Gerry as much as Gerry gloms on to him, is a bit more of a mystery, that is perhaps simply, their chemistry. He seems to like hanging out with Gerry, as much as anything, but both characters are self destructive and complete committment-phobes. There is a dynamite Blues soundtrack, and the montages of neon and nightlife from cities along the road from Iowa to New Orleans are well done, if a bit touristy. I really dug the ...

Glib Reviews Of Recent DVD Releases Tangerine - Directed By Sean Baker Tangerine is one of those films that ‘feels like’ it was shot chronologically. The first few scenes are a bit rough, the acting is a bit iffy, but as the characters of Sin-Dee and Alexandra walk endlessly through their drama filled Christmas Eve Day in L.A. The picture gets more gripping, the cinematography, the acting and the script all get better, more polished in a low budget way. The locations give a nice grimy seventies feel to the whole thing. Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) is especially unlikeable at the beginning of the film, her single mindedness in finding her pimp/boyfriend and the girl he ‘cheated on her’ with while she was doing a month in jail, is not terribly nuanced. The buffer of the her best friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor) trying to keep her from all the drama she is creating, while trying to hustle tickets for a show she is doing that night keeps the whole thing from being one note. ...

Glib Reviews of Recent Movies. The Revenant  - Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu Like Iñárritu’s last film, “Birdman,” I was sucked in early, then spit out just before the ending. I feel like going back and seeing if his early films fail me in the third act as much as his last few. The film as a whole was quite good, cinematically, the actors were amazing if occasionally too mannered. I mean maybe Tom Hardy’s incoherent mumbling was supposed to be incoherent? Even if that is so; it still took away from an interesting character’s arc.  The cinematography, as usual in Iñárritu’s pictures is astounding. Though, I found the Argentinian shot scenes a bit jarring with the much more haunted looking forests than the stuff done in the Rockies, that was supposed to match up. Quibbles though, that. Some stuff was done in a studio in Burnaby also. For me the simple story gave way to non-story, with the prolonged chase at the end, which was much more paint by number...