Tag Archives: Shailene Woodley

The Mauritanian review — Injustice exposed in post-9/11 thriller

February 25, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Kevin Macdonald | Written by Michael Bronner, Rory Haines, and Sohrab Noshirvani, based on the book Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Salahi | 129 min | Amazon Prime With this film following 2019's The Report and Official Secrets, Hollywood is still mining stories from the ways in which the American military industrial complex… Read More

Snowden review — Stone chooses drama over suspense

September 16, 2016 flawintheiris

Directed by Oliver Stone | Written by Stone and Keiran Fitzgerald, based on books by Anatoly Kucherena and Luke Harding | 134 min | ▲▲△△△ I have to own my bias on this one, just as I did with Pawn Sacrifice and another Joseph Gordon Levitt feature The Walk: These movies are all fictionalized takes on real… Read More

Insurgent review — An unremarkable return to the faction-filled future

March 30, 2015 flawintheiris

Directed by Robert Schwentke, written by Brian Duffield, Akiva Goldsman, and Mark Bomback, from the novel by Veronica Roth. Insurgent is a dull, big-budget misfire. What was silly but ebullient in the first film, Divergent, feels heavy-handed and irritating in its sequel. Characters who formerly seemed appealing now come across as insipid. And a storyline that… Read More

Reviews: Ida, Blue Ruin, The One I Love, White Bird In A Blizzard

December 31, 2014 flawintheiris

A few impressions of films now available on one of the alternative platforms—Netflix, DVD, Blu-Ray, VOD, iTunes, what have you—that didn't open in local cinemas. Ida A spare and gorgeous black and white drama from filmmaker Pawel Pawilikowski (My Summer of Love, The Woman In The Fifth), Ida is set in Communist Poland in the… Read More

The Fault in Our Stars review

June 10, 2014 flawintheiris

Directed by Josh Boone, written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, adapting the book by John Green I'll admit it. I cried. I saw the way this movie set me up to get emotional toward the end and it didn't matter an iota that I was aware of its machinations. So, crying-credit where it's… Read More

Divergent review

March 27, 2014 flawintheiris

Directed by Neil Burger Written by Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor, from the novel by Veronica Roth It's been a while since I've had such aggressively ambivalent feelings about a movie. While I felt the premise and many of the plot details were ridiculous and poorly thought-out, I really enjoyed the feature's execution: The direction,… Read More

The Spectacular Now review

October 1, 2013 flawintheiris

Directed by James Ponsoldt Written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, adapting the Tim Tharp novel The Spectacular Now manages a very difficult trick: it quietly shifts its tone without selling out or undercutting the way it starts or how it ends. It's a teen coming-of-age movie that begins lightly and gets heavy, but… Read More

The Descendants review

December 3, 2011 flawintheiris

Directed by Alexander PayneScreenplay by Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash from a novel by Kaui Hart HemmingsGeorge Clooney is Matt King. Matt is the trustee of a large parcel of land in Hawaii, a place that seems a whole lot like paradise despite Matt's voiceover telling us that everyone's life has rough patches, even… Read More