2008
Main Movie
Page
Atonement
Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Brideshead Revisited
Counterfeiters
The Dark Knight
Enchanted
Frozen River
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Iron Man
Juno
Man on Wire
Michael Clayton
No Country
for Old Men
Rachel Getting Married
the Savages
The Secret Life of Bees
Sweeney Todd
There Will Be Blood
The Visitor
WALL-E
Film
Reviews from 2007
Film Reviews
from 2006
Film
Reviews and commentary by Tom Condon, OP (St. Martin Province) listed alphabetically by title |
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 AtonementWhen Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) was 13 years old, she was witness to a lewd act between her older sister Cecillia (Keira Knightley) and Robbie (James McAvoy), a servant's son, that ends up sending the boy to jail. Several years later, Briony (Romola Garai) is a young woman who tries to heal the wound the previous incident inflicted on her family. READ MORE |
WINNER Golden Globe Award: best film drama best original score. |
 Brideshead
RevisitedAficionados of Evelyn Waugh 1945 masterpiece and of its faithful 1981 Granada Television adaptation will find the film version of "Brideshead Revisited" (Miramax/BBC) well acted and lushly outfitted, but substantially re-imagined in its essentials. READ MORE |
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 The
Boy in the Striped Pajamas Eight year-old Bruno is the sheltered son of a Nazi officer whose promotion takes the family from their comfortable home in Berlin to a desolate area where the lonely boy finds nothing to do and no-one to play with. Bruno ignores his mother’s repeated instructions not to explore the back garden and heads for the ‘farm’ he has seen in the near distance..READ MORE |
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WINNER Academy Award: best foreign language film (2007) |
 Dark KnightBatman, Gordon and Harvey Dent are forced to deal with the chaos unleashed by an anarchist mastermind known only as the Joker, as it drives each of them to their limits. READ MORE |
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 Frozen
River Two days before Christmas in rural upstate New York, Ray Eddy’s husband has left her in an impossible situation—not only is he gone, but he has gambled away all of the family’s meager savings. Then she meets someone with an idea that changes everything. READ MORE |
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 Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal SkullThe return of our hero of 20 years ago promises to be a summer blockbuster, but Tom Condon has a different point of view. Are the thrills and spills worth your hard earned cold cash? READ MORE |
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 Iron Man Billionaire industrialist Tony Stark builds a high-tech suit of armor and leads a double-life as the superhero, Iron Man. Even though it promises to be the first of the summer block busters, find out why film critic Tom Condon disliked the film. READ MORE |
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 JunoJuno (Ellen Page) is a Mid-Western highschooler, who decides one day, out of boredom or curiosity, to have sex with her friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), a member of her school's track team. She likes him well enough, but isn't hung up on him. This one time encounter results in Juno's pregnancy. She and her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) decide to take control of the situation by browsing for prospective adoptive parents in the local Pennysaver newspaper... READ MORE |
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 Man on Wire A look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit's daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City's World Trade Center's twin towers in 1974, what some consider, "the artistic crime of the century." READ MORE |
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 Michael
Clayton Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is what is known in the legal world as a "fixer," or in the character's own pejorative version, a "janitor" who cleans up legal messes for VIPs and corporations on behalf of a prestigious New York City law firm. READ MORE |
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 No Country for Old MenNo Country is set in Texas in 1980. It follows three characters: Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who happens upon a suitcase full of money from a botched drug deal; the psychopathic killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), who is fast on Llewelyn’s tail, and Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) who is trailing both of them through the border towns of West Texas. READ MORE |
Winner: Best Picture Oscar |
 Rachel Getting Married When Kym returns to the Buchman family home for the wedding of her sister Rachel, she brings a long history of personal crisis and family conflict along with her. The wedding party's abundant cast of friends and relations have gathered for an idyllic weekend of feasting, music and love, but Kym -- with her black-comic one-liners and knack for bombshell drama -- is a catalyst for long-simmering tensions...MORE |
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 The SavagesTwo siblings (Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman) who have drifted apart over the years are forced to get reacquainted when they both must care for their elderly father (Philip Bosco). READ MORE |
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 The Secret Life of BeesI remember reading Sue Monk Kidd’s bestselling novel five years ago. Her story of a motherless South Carolina girl who escapes her abusive father and gradually experiences healing is warm and inspirational. I loved it for its Southern blend of wisdom, humor, community, feminism, and spirituality. READ MORE |
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 Sweeney
Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street The thriller is based on the hit Broadway musical and Depp actually sings in the film. Depp plays Benjamin Barker, a man who was falsely imprisoned for 15 years after a judge sets him up in order to take his wife and daughter. Barker escapes and takes on the name of Sweeney Todd. Todd, who is a barber by trade, seeks to take out revenge on all of the people who have wronged him. READ MORE |
WINNER: Golden Globe: best film musical and best actor in a musical for Johnny Depp |
 There Will Be Blood Daniel Day-Lewis gives a stunning performance as a self made oil man, with many secrets, who tries to buy up the oil rights in California in the early years of the 20th Century. Tom Condon loved this film, find out why... READ MORE |
Winner: Best Actor, Academy Awards |
 The
Visitor Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is an unassuming economics professor who is completely fed up with his boring life. But on one of his trips to New York city, he finds a couple, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Gurira), squatting in his apartment. Striking up an unusual friendship with the couple, Walter helps them out, especially when Tarek is thrown into a detention center after being caught living in the country illegally. READ MORE |
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WALL-E |
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