It’s very rare that modern family films leave me feeling overwhelmed with emotions, but oddly enough this adaptation of the Walden media book managed to accomplish that very task by being a sweet family dramedy that doesn’t talk down to its audience. Sure, it’s whimsical and goofy and occasionally wholesome, but deep down there is a strong undercurrent of sadness and grief present among every character, all of whom are facing change in their lives that may decide who they become in the next few years and beyond. “Ramona and Beezus” is a remarkable dramedy about a small girl named Ramona Quimby a child large heart and an even larger imagination who uses her creativity and individuality to not only disconnect her from her world but cope with the massive and potentially traumatizing life altering changes happening around her.
Tag Archives: Drama
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010)
When all is said and done, you really won’t miss much with “Diary of the Wimpy Kid.” It’s all a fairly forgettable and polarizing comedy that’s strictly targeted to the preteen boys of the audience, all of whom are convinced this is how middle school is and will be like. Unless you’re an absolutely die hard fan of Chloe Moretz or Steve Zahn, you really should not rush to see “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” in spite of the fact that it’s not at all the excruciating experience the trailers would have you believe. There is really some interesting bits and storytelling to be had here with some honest explorations in to these young characters.
Winter's Bone (2010)
Ree Dolly is smart enough to know not to have sex at her young age and have a child. She is in a world of poverty and goes to school with friends who are barely out of puberty and strapped down with a baby. The tragedy though is with her mother being basically an invalid incapable of caring for herself, Ree is forced to be a mother anyway for her baby brother and sister, both of whom can barely cook let alone fend for themselves. It’s a horrible sick irony that plagues the life of Ree, the oldest of three children who is basically the mother, daughter, and guardian of her household, forced to live day by day and is often so desperate she has to rely on the neighbors to feed her family and give them electricity, but is too proud to ask for a hand out.
Aiming at Nikita
So far this is the third variation of the Luc Besson spy thriller masterpiece “La Femme Nikita,” and the more variations we see of it, the more the actual point of the premise is loss. We had “Point of No Return” a remake with Bridget Fonda I think I’d rather forget if only for being a piss poor adaptation of Besson’s film and for becoming a relatively obscure nineties fixture that put some nails in to Fonda’s career coffin. Then there was the basic cable spy thriller starring Peta Wilson that I really never bothered to watch mainly because it felt like a version of “Mission: Impossible,” and now there’s “Nikita.”
127 Hours (2010)
Director Danny Boyle’s dramatic thriller chronicles the hours of Aron Ralston and his battle with a lodged rock that sealed his fate and brought Aron down to Earth to come to grips with his own life and mortality. Much like “In to the Wild,” director Boyle takes what was something of an already interesting story and turns it in to much than an experience by altering it in to a surreal and somewhat spiritual look back at a young man whose life has been filled with excitement and adventure that he used as a form of coping with his inability to allow people to connect to him as he connected to nature and the wilderness. And much like Sean Penn accomplished with “In to the Wild,” he manages to take an accident and uses it as a form of expressing the ideas of fate, coincidence, and the afterlife and a person communing with and ultimately becoming one with the environment around him.
Let Me In (2010)
I think “Let Me In” will be deemed as a respectable companion piece to the infinitely superior “Let The Right One In” if only because Matt Reeves directs this version with his eye on convention more than edge. The original was already so gruesome and complex and filled with subtext and undertones that Reeves opts instead for simple and superficial and it will rely on the audiences preference if they want a movie about a vampire and a boy falling in love, or if they want a story about a boy and a girl falling in love, one of whom mutilates people and drinks their blood.
Black Swan (2010)
Director Darren Aronofsky has always had a talent for delving in to the human psyche and offering us deeper more complex looks in to our souls and perceptions of reality. “Requiem for a Dream” was a film constantly teetering between a life of misery and woe distorted by our own desires for something better, while “The Fountain” destroyed all of our notions of time and infinity in a world not bound by simple quantities of hours and days. His master opus is a work of art that transforms the world of Nina Sayers in to something of a personal hell where she is incapable of escaping and is seeking a perfection that she may never be able to obtain. “Black Swan” is a masterpiece, a classic trail of perceived normality in to madness, a world of light consumed by shadows, and our very own minds becoming the key to our unraveling of consciousness and reality.