items tagged with Brendan Gleeson

HAPPY ENDINGS

This summer, I was fortunate enough to catch a special screening of writer/director Don Roos’ Happy Endings at the University of Iowa, but decided to hold off on a review until the film made it to our area.

THE VILLAGE

Nobody likes a know-it-all, so I have nothing to gain by admitting that I figured out The Big Twist in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village after about 15 minutes. But I’ll venture that this popular writer-director has everything to lose by continuing to make his cinematic spook shows so repetitively, predictably “surprising." If you find yourself less than enthralled by The Village’s narrative, you have far too much time to ruminate on how Shyamalan will attempt, yet again, to pull the rug out from under you; he’s undermining his talent – and the man does have some – with his implied “Bet ya didn’t see that coming!” finales. (It’s becoming easy to respond with, “Oh yeah I did.”)

TROY

About 100 minutes into Troy – director Wolfgang Petersen’s and screenwriter David Benioff’s very loose adaptation of Homer’s The Iliad, which details the events leading up to and during The Trojan War – there’s a battle sequence that gives the audience a true rush.

COLD MOUNTAIN

Though the story of two separated lovers braving incredible hardships to eventually reunite is a common one in war-themed movies, I don’t think I’ve ever been less moved by it than in Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain, an adaptation of Charles Frazier’s much-adored Civil War novel.