oliver platt | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: The Oranges

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Darren

There’s an interesting film in here, somewhere. The Oranges teases the possibility of brutally exposing the seedy underside of suburban life, as we follow an affair between a married man and his best friend’s daughter, but The Oranges is far too shallow to land anything resembling a killing stroke. The adult cast is composed of talented veterans, but the script doesn’t give them much to do – instead The Oranges treats their children as the focal point, misjudging the talent of young actresses Leighton Meester and Alia Shawkat. It all feels too light, too cosy, and too willing to pick the low-hanging fruit to really create an interesting study of life in the ‘burbs.

Keeping it in the family…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Alia Shawkat, Catherine Keener, christmas, Conditions and Diseases, David, film, Food, Fruit, Health, hugh laurie, Leighton Meester, Movie, Neurological Disorders, non-review review, oliver platt, oranges, review, stroke, United States | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Executive Decision

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Darren

Are you manly? I mean really manly? In a way, Executive Decision is kinda what I was hoping for when I heard about The Expendables. It’s not an excellent movie, or even an exceptional one – in fact, it can be cynically described as “Die Hard on a plane” – but it’s a perfectly serviceable action movie that gets bonus points for never trying to be anything more than what it is. There’s not tangential romantic plot or half-hearted attempts at characterisation: the movie is all business. And that business is attempting to give its audience testosterone poisoning.