Where does one begin to comment on a film like this without injecting one’s self and one’s ego into the words being written? That is, after all, the style of “United 93.” There’s no trace of artifice, intention, agenda, style, or plot in the film. The tension that builds relies heavily on what we already know, so there’s no manufactured twist needed here. Our anxieties are…
Akeelah Henderson (Keke Palmer) seems like a typical girl on the surface. She talks about boys with her friend, Georgia (Sahara Garey), at Crenshaw Middle School. But underneath her loquaciousness lies an insecure prodigy. She hides her perfect test scores from her peers, fearing ostracism for her intelligence. Her oldest brother is in the military, and…
Just before this movie started, my wife and I were having a conversation about, incidentally, the misogynistic violence in certain films of late, such as “Wolf Creek.” But just what is the biggest con in David Slade’s “Hard Candy?” It could be…
You know it. You’ve seen it. It’s the “rebel gets community service as penance for her crimes” plot. The punishment? She has to serve her time in the Vickerman Gymnastics Academy. However, while Haley Graham (Missy Peregrym) is rather analogous to Emilio Estevez’ character in “The Mighty Ducks” (from Disney, which is part of Buena Vista Pictures, the distributor of this movie), the film attempts…