AirTalk with Larry Mantle

Alternative Film Guide

Art Center College of Design

aTypical Joe’s “Giuliani Time” Blog

Felicia C. Sullivan’s “Loverboy” Blog

Giuliani Time Official Website

The Christian Science Monitor’s Arts & Entertainment Website

The Lake House Official Website

Loverboy Official Website

movieEVERYday

Variety.com

Words for My Enjoyment’s “Why The Lake House Is Completely Unrealistic” Blog

Insider Viewpoints

I wasn’t very impressed with second-time director Kevin Bacon’s film Loverboy. It really seemed like an underdeveloped student film featuring the acting wife and friends of the director.

Unfortunately, it was a sour offering on many levels. The film is poorly directed and the narrative is meandering, and in the end, extremely unsatisfying. (I kept asking myself, who “pitched” this idea to the studio? Better yet, who “green lighted” it?)

The camera work, complete with cliché angles and effects, is sophomoric. The acting betrays the skills of the actors without exception.

The soundtrack seems to be samplings straight out of Mr. Bacon’s iPod. Loverboy proves that there is no substitute for good directing skills, and that directing skills are not the by-product of an acting career. Moreover, a well-told story, tragic or otherwise, is all-important to the success of any film.

Scott Summerville
Director, Film Operations
Art Center College of Design

In The Lake House, Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves play two platonic lovers separated, not by physical or emotional space, but by an even more gigantic obstacle: time. Two years to be exact.

Obviously, the film’s main question is will the lovers ever meet? No prizes for those who guess right.

This Hollywood-style remake of Hyun-Seung Lee’s slick, MTV-ish Il Mare is more conventional and less visually striking than the original. Yet director Alejandro Agresti’s subdued approach has made the absurd story more appealing -- and a tad more heartfelt -- than the glitzier Korean film.

Those who enjoy a mix of workman-like filmmaking and manufactured romances will not be disappointed. However, those who believe that romantic movies should offer more than plot gimmicks, star power and pop ballads should probably look for entertainment elsewhere. How about renting Letter from an Unknown Woman and Three Colors: Red instead?

Andre Soares
Editor and Creator
Alternative Film Guide

Given the cult-classic status of Napoleon Dynamite, the pressure to repeat was huge for writer and director Jared Hess. In Nacho Libre, he focused on Ignacio, an outcast, chubby Mexican orphan -- irreverent Jack Black -- who is forced by his church-run orphanage into servitude as their cook.

While growing up, his peculiar habits, exaggerated facial expressions and out-of-sync timing with the ladies aside, he is inspired by the lovely Sister Encarnación (Ana de la Reguera) to don the costume of red- and blue-masked Nacho, make it big in pro-wrestling and earn enough money and respect to buy the orphanage a bus for field trips. A few gross, impertinent or redundant scenes later, he and tag-team partner Esqueleto are in the ring, losing every match. While Jack Black is hilarious, in a smarmy kind of way, and the script is good, although directionless at times, the film needed something more to achieve a lasting following -- you guessed it, Napoleon Dynamite!

M.S.C. Thompson
Movie Critic
movieEVERYday

Pulitzer Prize-winning author David "Proof" Auburn and Argentine director Alejandro Agresti reunite Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock at The Lake House. This complicated, time-bending film proves that even two years of bygones can't stand in the way of true love. Occasionally challenging to follow, the film wraps well in the end.

M.S.C. Thompson
Movie Critic
movieEVERYday