Bernard Boo's Movie Reviews
All movie reviews written by Bernard Boo
-
Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Lee Daniels’ The Butler is a chronicling of the civil rights movement through the eyes and ears of a black butler in the White House, based on a real man, Eugene Allen, who served 7 U.S. presidents from 1952...
-
In a World…
Remember Don LaFontaine? He’s the movie trailer guy; the “In a world…” guy. You know, the deep, gravelly voice that announced countless movie trailers in the ‘80s and ‘90s. LaFontaine, who has now left us, left a hole in...
-
Jobs
The first of what will surely be an unending wave of Steve Jobs films (Aaron Sorkin is hard at work on his) is here, and a doozy it’s not; Joshua Michael Stern’s Jobs is about as straightforward and unremarkable...
-
The Zigzag Kid (SFJFF Review)
When I was a kid, movies like Beauty and the Beast, The Sandlot, Toy Story, and Star Wars opened the floodgates of my imagination, inspiring me to dream up some big adventure stories of my own. These films have...
-
Out in the Dark (SFJFF Review)
A raw and sensuous tale of forbidden love across a cavernous sociopolitical divide (the Israeli-Palestinian divide, to be exact), Out in the Dark is an impressive feature debut for director Michael Mayer, who studied film at USC. Nimr (Nicholas...
-
The Attack (SFJFF Review)
Though set in the trenches of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ziad Doueiri’s mystery-thriller The Attack operates predominantly on an intimate, human level, centering on a Palestinian man living in Tel Aviv (Ali Suliman) who’s bent on smoking out the people...
-
Rue Mandar (SFJFF Review)
Following the death of their beloved family matriarch, two sisters (Sandrine Kiberlain and Emmanuelle Devos), their brother (Richard Berry), and their French-Jewish families gather in Paris to mourn their loss (each in their own way), annoy the living daylights...
-
The Cutoff Man (SFJFF Review)
Set in a sun-toasted Israel, first-timer Idan Hubel’s The Cutoff Man is a patiently reflective tale of an old man named Gabi (veteran Israeli actor Moshe Ivgy) whose dignity is slowly stripped away by a thankless (putting it mildly)...
-
Life According to Sam (SFJFF Review)
In the mid ‘90s, doctors Leslie Gordon and Scott Berns fell in love and had a child. His name is Sam. He’s 16, loves fiddling with Legos, excels in school, and plays a killer snare drum. He also has...
-
Blue Jasmine
It’s always felt like everyone’s been waiting for Woody Allen‘s legendary, ultra-prolific career to inevitably begin sputtering out. When he began really losing steam about a decade ago with duds like Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Melinda and...