Bernard Boo's Movie Reviews
All movie reviews written by Bernard Boo
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The Square
The Square captures the chaotic energy of the Egyptian mass protests of 2011 and 2013, a rush of sights and sounds shot at street level that blitzes the senses as it quickens the heart. It’s not as informative a documentary...
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The Invisible Woman
The Invisible Woman, Ralph Fiennes sophomore directorial effort (following up 2011’s Coriolanus), tells the true story of the love affair Charles Dickens (played by Fiennes) had with a much younger woman, actress Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones), with a touch so...
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Liv & Ingmar
For those familiar with the films of Ingmar Bergman, Liv & Ingmar‘s greatest gift is that it adds a new layer of richness to the Swedish auteur’s legendary oeuvre. The documentary examines the extraordinary 42-year-long relationship with he and his...
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August: Osage County
Broad and brutal, August: Osage County doesn’t offer much in the way of subtlety, but there’s something satisfying about indulging in the bigness of it all. The all-star cast, headed up by a bitch-mode Meryl Streep and a seething Julia Roberts,...
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Caught in the Web
When Lanqiu (Gao Yuanyuan), a young Chinese executive with a promising future learns during a routine physical that she’s fatally ill, she becomes dreadfully upset and, in a lapse of judgement, refuses to offer her seat to an old...
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Reaching For the Moon
An examination of Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Elizabeth Bishop’s pivotal years spent in Brazil in the 1950’s and ’60s, Reaching For the Moon is an ironically literal, trite, unpoetic biopic that likely wouldn’t have been met with approval by its...
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Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom falls into several of the common pitfalls hindering biopics of the same ilk–most notably an artistically inhibiting obedience to biographical milestones–and while director Justin Chadwick comes up short, Idris Elba turns in a thoughtful, commanding...
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Go For Sisters
A consistently intriguing figure in the independent film community, John Sayles is a sometimes brilliant, usually “meh”, filmmaker whose recent work leans more toward the “meh” side of the fence. With that being said, there’s no one quite like...
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Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
It’s been nearly a decade since Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy introduced Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay’s (then a newcomer) absurdist brand of humor to the masses, a brand of humor that earned the film the biggest cult...
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Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago
“I don’t want to sit in my depressed little life, popping pills in the same pattern.” It’s the type of thought that’s likely crossed all of our minds, though few of us ever bother to do anything–at least anything...