REVIEW: Trouble with the Curve [2012]

“Can De Niro rap?” The Atlanta Braves’ Turner Field outdoor gate security guard in Trouble with the Curve perfectly encapsulates the film. Sitting silently with his newspaper, you see him slowly lower it as Amy Adams‘ Mickey exits to answer Justin Timberlake‘s Johnny “The Flame” Flanigan’s flirtatious baseball trivia question. Like the guard, whenever the sport is onscreen—whether game action or verbal sparring—my interest piqued and I was able to invest in the plot of an aging scout going blind as he checks out the newest cocky high school prospect…

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REVIEW: The Descendants [2011]

“Goodbye my love, my friend, my pain, my joy. Goodbye.” Beginning in voiceover, Alexander Payne’s new film The Descendants introduces us to the King family through its in-over-his-head patriarch. In a brilliant analogy, he posits how his clan resembles their home state of Hawaii very closely—beyond the obvious ancestral roots dating back to the area’s native royalty. Like the archipelago, the Kings consist of differing parts of one whole that appear to slowly move away from each other as time passes. Physically split between islands due to boarding school and…

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