Mike Vilensky's Mini - Movie Reviews

1408
During his latest assignment, a best-selling author played by John Cusack has his solid skepticism of the supernatural shaken when he bunks up in a hotel's infamously evil room. Even my skepticism of John Cusack's post-Say Anything film career - and movies about the supernatural - is shaken by this solid, scary Stephen King adaptation. Life imitates art!

Evan Almighty
In this re-telling of the biblical Noah's Ark story / sequel to a Jim Carrey comedy (Bruce Almighty), Morgan Freeman plays God, which is oddly plausible, and Steve Carell plays a modern-day congressman-cum-Noah. If you're split on the faith versus function debate, this may be the film for you: simultaneously sacrilege and also overwhelmingly theistically didactic, Evan Almighty is either the film for both faithful families and stalwart secularists or, perhaps, neither. And, on that note, no one.

A Mighty Heart
Angelina Jolie stars as a woman leading the effort to find her husband, Daniel, a journalist abducted while on assignment in Pakistan. Based on Mariane Pearl's memoir about the terrorist be-heading of her husband, this film finds hope in the most depraved of places. That said, I must mention that the male lead, Dan Futterman, once played Charlotte's gay-acting straight boyfriend in an episode of Sex & The City, a little-known gig that I'm sure he believes is behind him with this powerhouse performance. Well you may have fooled America, Dan Futterman, but you haven't fooled me.

You Kill Me
Ben Kingsley plays a recovering alcoholic hit man who befriends a sassy lady played by Tea Leoni. This film has that cult of a movie mixture with hard-boiled film noir characters with dark pasts but warm hearts waiting to make amends, and humor. Kingsley's character has a score to settle in, of all places, Buffalo, NY - which is reason enough for me to give this two guns up.

Black Sheep
An experiment in genetic engineering turns once innocuous sheep into cold-blooded killers terrorizing a New Zealand farm. Irony-loving hipsters and Tarantino fanboys: start your engines. Everyone else: run like the mainstream, herded sheep that you are, far away from this film.

Broken English
Manhattan darling Parkey Posey plays Manhattan darling Nora Wilder who tires of New York's singles scene and flees to Paris on a whim to reconnect with an unlikely lover. The debut director is the offspring of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands and Posey's turns might make her the female pinnacle performance for the increasingly popular coming-of-age-at-thirty indie movie genre. Anticipate well-deserved word-of-mouth praise. I love the pretentious ones with a soft side. Who doesn't?

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