By Brian Lafferty

April 1, 2011 (San Diego) – The Music Never Stopped is a classic example of a good movie that could have been greater. The movie has an interesting premise but that’s all it is. It does some stuff with this premise but not as much as I wanted. I was never bored, and in the end I liked it, but I wish it could have done a lot more with the subject.

By Brian Lafferty

March 27, 2011 (San Diego) – I’ve seen movies that begin full speed and with ambition but collapse under their own weight. On the other end of the spectrum, there have been movies that try to be extremely low-key but eventually implode for the same reason. A Somewhat Gentle Man goes for the mundane and something in me kept anticipating a collapse. When it became apparent three-quarters of the way through that this wouldn’t happen, I sat back and enjoyed.

By Brian Lafferty

March 18, 2011 (San Diego) – I want to make one thing plain: I Saw the Devil is not entertainment. It is sickening, repellent, unrelentingly violent, depraved, and twisted. That last sentence makes it sound like it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. Instead, it is a great film for exactly those reasons. It is definitely not for everyone but if you’re looking for a revenge film done right, and you don’t mind subtitles, then here’s a film for you.

By Brian Lafferty

March 6, 2011 (San Diego) – After my mother died last November I learned something about myself: I have no regrets. I never say, “If only…” Instead, I tell myself, “If it weren’t for…” When I look back on my first twenty-five years of existence I see that I wouldn’t be where I am now if I did anything differently.

By Brian Lafferty

March 2, 2011 (San Diego) – If there is one thing I’ve learned in the last year it’s that you never know where life will take you. Faithful readers may have noticed in my reviews references to my time at Cal State, Fullerton. I took a variety of classes in criticism, writing, and production. In two of my courses, I produced several sixteen-millimeter shorts.

By Brian Lafferty

February 18. 2011 (San Diego) – Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense, once said, “To make a great film you need three things – the script, the script and the script.” Too bad Korean director Sang-soo Im didn’t heed this advice when he wrote The Housemaid.

By Brian Lafferty

January 28, 2011 (San Diego) – When I think of Barney’s Version, one director that keeps coming to mind for some reason is Mike Nichols. Maybe it’s because Nichols is someone who I consider to be an actor’s director. His movies contain great stories but the performances are what I remember the most. Barney’s Version is the same way. The story is well-written but it’s Paul Giamatti’s great acting that is the most memorable.

By Brian Lafferty

January 21, 2011 (San Diego) -- Over the last few years I’ve discovered a love-hate feeling with Pixar. Back in 1995 I was enthralled when I saw Toy Story in the theater. Since then I have seen every Pixar movie and I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of their films. They put more effort into their movies than most studios and it shows every time.

By Brian Lafferty

January 15, 2011 (San Diego) – Another Year is about how people move in and out of our lives, such as how my two sisters and their families from out of town visit once or twice a year. With each visit, I see they have made all sorts of progress in their lives. They have kids, the kids grow up, and each year everyone gets a little smarter and wiser.    

By Brian Lafferty

January 7, 2011 (San Diego) – Looking at a few of Blue Valentine’s negative reviews (as of today, the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer stands at 91% with only nine “rotten” reviews against eighty-six positive) I find the film’s unfavorable comparisons to the directorial work of the late John Cassavetes a recurring observation.

Granted, the movie isn’t the first to explore a marriage’s disintegration. Cassavetes’ Faces and Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road come to mind. However, I believe this criticism is unfair to Blue Valentine. I don’t mind if a movie doesn’t have an original plot as long as it has unique and strong characters. This movie is populated with two of them.

By Brian Lafferty

December 11, 2010 (San Diego)--While watching Tiny Furniture, which opened yesterday at the Ken Cinema, I was somewhat captivated and never bored. It accomplishes its goals and captures without fail the feeling it wants to convey.

By Brian Lafferty

November 7, 2010 (San Diego) – Due Date feels like an in-between job for Todd Phillips. His previous film, last year’s The Hangover, is one of the funniest comedies I’ve ever seen and that is not something I say lightly. The sequel is set to release next year. Due Date doesn’t have anywhere near the number of laughs as The Hangover, which I don’t fault; that movie achieved a seemingly impossible feat in which every single gag was not only funny but downright hilarious. But Due Date has enough laughs for me to recommend it.

By Brian Lafferty

October 23, 2010 (San Diego)--After the hilarious yet powerfully dramatic and tragic Gran Torino and the rousing Invictus, director Clint Eastwood has followed up with the somber and sedate Hereafter, which presented a challenge for my attention span. The movie opens with a spectacular tsunami that nearly takes the life of French journalist Marie LeLay (Cecile De France). For the first hour after this sequence I started getting a little restless, feeling that the film wasn’t delivering anything close to the level of the opening action. But that changed over the next hour and I began to fully appreciate it. It doesn’t rank among Eastwood’s best directorial efforts but it is a good movie that doesn’t have a lot to say about its subject matter but is interesting if you’re willing to listen.

By Brian Lafferty

October 17, 2010 (San Diego)--Nowhere Boy doesn’t offer anything revelatory about John Lennon but that doesn’t matter. It is easy to go into this movie expecting something extraordinary. But if the film were to take such an approach, it would have been wrong. We know Lennon is a legend but that began as a member of The Beatles. The filmmakers could have made a film about his time with the Fab Four or his relationship with Yoko Ono. But writer Matt Greenhalgh and director Sam Taylor-Wood elect to explore a time in this man’s life that hasn’t really been touched on: his teenage years.