Looks like this will be a recurring feature after all! Here are the films I saw for the first time during the month of April, along with mini-reviews and ratings.
Horrible Bosses (Seth Gordon, 2011)
There are a few fairly funny lines in this one, but the real reason it (barely) succeeds is the cast. They have fun with their characters and find the right tone for the material – Kevin Spacey in particular is spot-on as one of the bosses. I have some pretty big problems with the plot, which is contrived in a non-funny way and feature more logic gaps than what’s easy to swallow. Overall, I guess the movie was okay, but I don’t see myself ever revisiting it.
3/5
Pleasantville (Gary Ross, 1998)
It’s always a delight when a movie grows as it goes along and becomes something richer than you expected. I had figured this one would be merely a fun-poking of old 50s sitcoms, and it looked that way at first. But then it changes and evolves, finding nuances in unexpected places and bringing up thoughts and ideas I though would be left unexplored. And what a stunning blend of black & white and color! Wonderful stuff. I wish I had seen this one before I made my Top 10 of 1998 list. It would have made the cut for sure.
5/5
We Bought a Zoo (Cameron Crowe, 2011)
Very formulaic for sure, with few surprises to behold to anyone who has seen this kind of drama-comedy before. But it’s sweet, it’s charming, it offers a surprisingly high amount of laughs, and the cast all put in solid efforts – from Matt Damon and Thomas Haden Church to Angus Macfadyen and Elle Fanning. We Bought a Zoo might not be Cameron Crowe’s most daring work, but it has a lot of heart.
4/5
A Swede Talks Movies 