Mario's Movie Moments

In Bruges
FLICK Playwright Martin McDonagh is primarily known for combining wit with dark scenarios in stage productions like The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Cripple of Inishmaan and The Pillowman. This time he adds feature film director to his resume (McDonagh won an Oscar for a short film) as those qualities are displayed in this simple story of two hit men holed up in a hotel room in Bruges, Belgium after a murder goes awry.
It's the rhythm of the dialogue that particularly works here, and Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson spar nicely as the men in hiding and waiting for a phone call from their boss, played by Ralph Fiennes, who completes the mobster triptych. The acting is great all around but it's nice to see Farrell trade up his bad boy image with a character who has a sensitive side and Fiennes doing just the opposite.
There are few boundaries, sometimes at the expense of dwarf jokes and the ugly American, which meander through the story only to come back around presenting McDonagh's unique voice and showing off the actors more than action.
My Score: 8 out of 10

Vantage Point
FLICK Dialogue has less importance in this suspense film showing a terrorist plot from multiple perspectives emphasizing action rather than character background. I can be a sucker for a good gimmick and though I've seen this one before, particularly on television, the sum of the parts doesn't add up as satisfyingly as they should. But that doesn't mean it's not a fun ride.
The twists and turns take place within a half hour on the critical day when the US president is visiting in Salamanca, Spain. The concept is front and center moving the players along as if in a game of checkers - jumping over one another and building on the prior move to find a winning solution. Dennis Quaid looks nauseous as a Secret Service agent back on the job after taking a bullet for the president a few years earlier. Also joining an international cast are William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver and even to a degree Forest Whitaker who all essentially phone in their performances. Matthew Fox shows his lack of range copping the same attitude as his character Jack on "Lost". I was looking forward to Spanish actor Eduardo Noriega's English-language film debut, but while the star of Open Your Eyes (the basis for remake Vanilla Sky) does his part to create urgency he gets less screen time then most in the ensemble.
An extended car chase near the end of the film might have been more believable with more causalities since it primarily takes place in a densely populated area. But since this is a big-budget Hollywood film, there is little time for reality, no matter how many points of view you get. My Score: 6.5 out of 10

Persepolis

FLICK When I think of an animated movie it's easy to expect fantasies like Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle, or fun family movies targeted to kids and adults like Toy Story and Monster House.
Persepolis is an endearing and witty coming-of-age film based on the autobiographical graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi who grew up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. But the story is incredibly involving and has so much heart that there were times I forgot I was watching an animated movie.
Marjane narrates her story beginning when she was a young girl living with her parents and regularly visiting her grandmother, who has strong feminist ideals and offers useful advice. As a teenager (voiced by Chiara Mastroianni, with her real-life mother Catherine Deneuve as Marjane's mother) she is sent away to Vienna to escape the repressive time of Tehran. She rocks out to punk music, learns lessons of love and eventually lives on the streets.
The bold black-and-white drawings have an expressionistic quality that offers a look at a less than joyful past contrasted with the supposed freedom expressed in the colored portions of present day France, where Marjane is today. But the constant motion of the images has a lyrical quality that nicely juxtaposes and makes easier to grasp the growing experiences of a youth within the absurdities of a dangerous political climate. This memoir has a lot of heart without being overly sentimental and I liked Marjane so much that I would have watched if the story continued to have followed her into and through the present. My Score: 9.5 out of 10