Author: Elena Nola

I did not go into this newest version of The Three Musketeers with high expectations.  In point of fact, I expected the film to be kind of bad.  I find myself forced to confess a …

The Mortician is almost impossible to classify.  I saw it described as “post-apocalyptic,” but it’s not really SF; a fair number of people in line with me for the screening thought it was horror because …

96 Minutes is a festival gem.  With the films screening in competition, you never really walk in sure of what you’ll get; like Forest Gump’s box of chocolate, sometimes the film’s a truffle and other …

The Thing (2011) both exceeded my expectations and proved a massive disappointment, and while that statement may seem paradoxical it is nonetheless true. 

South by Southwest favorite Bellflower finally made it to New Orleans this week. The movie’s description placed it well inside my sweet zone for films, so I made a point to go to one of …

Get Low is one of those movies that really should have been better than it is.  The film has an interesting premise and the cast to pull that premise off, and yet somehow it simply …

Lo was a movie I went into with no expectations. The description said it was about a man who summons a demon to find his girlfriend, who has been dragged to hell.  That was enough …

Drive just might be my favorite movie of 2011.  Certainly it is my favorite movie of the year so far.  I loved it.  Hands down.  It is one of those rare movies that I wouldn’t …

It’s…over?  After 10 years, eight films, and 1179 minutes (not to mention the books!), the Harry Potter series has finally come to its end.  To be honest, I feel a lingering disbelief, an unwillingness to recognize …

The Black Death is about what you think it is.  Set near the beginning of the era of the bubonic plague, it follows a young monk out of his abbey while he serves as guide …

Like Nietzsche with God, last fall Disney declared that the fairy tale was dead.  In this case, that is, Disney would no longer be making animated features out of the old stories. As a child …

“The count’s frozen face was petrified and ashen and the blood still poured down the parallel cuts.  His eyes bulged wide, full of horror and pain.  It was glorious.  If you like that kind of …

I Sell the Dead is proof that not every IFC production is golden. It’s from a couple years ago now—2008, I think—and showed up on my Netflix recommendations page and sounded interesting enough to try. …

Mozart originally ended his opera Don Giovanni with Don Giovanni descending into Hell, his soul claimed by the devil, and later added a final ensemble to bring the performance away from the bleakness of that …

Matthew McConaughey is one of those actors that you just love even though they don’t really do that many good movies.  He’s done a handful over the years, maybe three or four, and he’s a …

When a movie could have been good, but wasn’t, it becomes an even worse movie experience than if there had been no expectation, no potential, for anything better.  So it was with The Adjustment Bureau.  …

Animal Kingdom is not a movie about the jungle but simply the law of the jungle: it’s kill or be killed, and only the strong survive. As the poster tagline claims, it is a crime …

Blue Valentine screened here at the NO Film Fest the same week Welcome to the Rileys, Black Swan, and 127 Hours did.  I did not end up seeing it due to a prior engagement the …

The King’s Speech is a problematic movie for me.  On the one hand, it’s a really great underdog story, the acting jobs were fabulous, and it’s a movie about hope in a time of darkness…but …

I almost didn’t go see this movie for three reasons:  it was getting panned by Rotten Tomatoes (somewhere in the 20 percent’s when I checked, which is just shy of worst movie of the year …

True Grit is the latest movie from the Coen brothers, and their best since No Country for Old Men.  It convinces me that they should stick to movies that are not comedic in structure but …

Tron Legacy is the sort of movie that, in my opinion, requires a disclosure of a reviewer’s perspective up front.  So to that end, I feel compelled to admit that I have only seen Tron …

I could review The Black Swan with one word:  amazing.  The film is dark and shifting, conflating dreams and obsessions into a terrifying reality where nothing is certain.  Natalie Portman stars as Nina, a ballerina …

Danny Boyle’s latest movie is based on a true story (chronicled in the memoir Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston), and it would be a disservice to the story and the …

Never Let Me Go is adapted from a book that I have not read.  So if you are looking for a book to film comparison, sorry, I can’t give you that—all I can judge is …

Now this is what a documentary should be!  After my disappointment with Restrepo a couple weeks ago, I was thrilled to realize, after popping in this DVD, that The Art of the Steal was reminding me …

Winter’s Bone is about a rural Missouri teenager whose drug-manufacturing father left her between a rock and a hard place when he put their property up to post his bond and then failed to make …

Inception is probably the first movie of 2010 that movie lovers have been legitimately anticipating—that is, looking forward to since that very first preview back in February.  Certainly I was.  Sometimes that anticipation is a …

Repo Men is a movie I wish someone could repo from my memory banks.  It was the biggest waste of two hours of my life since Avatar (and possibly longer, since it’s not a film …

Um. Wow. I am really not sure how to approach this one. First of all, this movie was not what I expected.  It looked from the previews like a love story, possibly happy and possibly …

Daybreakers, AKA 2010’s first vampire movie, is a pretty solid movie-going experience.  It delivers on its trailers, presenting an eerie future where almost all the humans on earth have been changed into vampires–and in having done so not just …

Brad Pitt called The Curious Case of Benjamin Button “a love letter to New Orleans.”  Well.  If Button was a love letter, then Disney’s The Princess and the Frog was a Homeric poem in the …

Going to a midnight movie is an experience that has to be included in the review of the film.  First, who was there?  Mostly female–about 1 in 10 people were male–and not as many shrieking …

The best romantic comedy of the year! I make that claim with only about 5% facetiousness. Zombieland, despite its name and premise (a pair of unlikely allies making their way through an America overrun with …

Shane Acker’s 9 is a movie that has been much anticipated around BSCReview.  We pretty thoroughly covered the media blitz for this movie, all of which I found intriguing and enticing:  the date tie-in, “9/9/9:  …

Virtuality is a new original program that Fox premiered last night.  It was unclear to me whether it was a TV movie or the pilot for a new series that may or may not actually advance …