From the Archive: "Beginners" Film Review

Film Rating: A

Welcome to The Archive, a comprehensive collection of reviews dating back to 2007, originally written for The Denver Post’s YourHub.Com website and print edition!  In the archive, you’ll find hundreds of movie, DVD, Blu-Ray, and TV reviews, along with other special features.  You can access the complete Archive Collection by clicking here, and read about the archive project by clicking here. 

Continue reading after the jump to access my original review of "Beginners"

Review: "The Tree of Life"

I’m not going to assign a letter-based rating to Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life.  It would be a pointless endeavor.  I grade films, at least in part, on a relative scale, meaning I must have some point of reference with which to compare.  The Tree of Life cannot be compared to other films; if there is one thing that can be said for the movie, it is wholly unique.  I suspect some writers who have spent all their lives as film critics can say they’ve seen something like The Tree of Life, but for 99% of us, myself included, it’s a completely new experience, one so incredibly different that there’s no way I can convey what watching the film is like.  Malick has quite a bit to say, and the crux of his message is actually quite beautiful; certainly, the film conjures many thoughts and emotions in the viewer’s head, and had I been taking notes, I’m sure I would have filled many pages. 

Yet once I sat down to write this review, I realized I have very little to say about The Tree of Life.  For all its so-called “meaning,” for all the style and craft and ‘grace’ on display, it merely numbed me for over two hours, and left me completely cold afterwards.  This is an example not of style overwhelming substance, but of style beating substance into submission and then running a long, long victory lap.  The Tree of Life is a beautifully crafted movie; the cinematography is some of the best you’ll ever see, with imagery that stands alongside some of the greatest art this medium has to offer.  The editing creates a rhythm that belongs to this film and this film alone, and Alexandre Desplat’s score is devastatingly gorgeous.  Yet the point Malick tries to make is constantly undermined by how he makes that point, and it doesn’t take long for the film to descend into self-parody.

Continue reading after the jump...

From the Archive: "Midnight in Paris" Film Review

Film Rating: A+

Welcome to The Archive, a comprehensive collection of reviews dating back to 2007, originally written for The Denver Post’s YourHub.Com website and print edition!  In the archive, you’ll find hundreds of movie, DVD, Blu-Ray, and TV reviews, along with other special features.  You can access the complete Archive Collection by clicking here, and read about the archive project by clicking here. 

Continue reading after the jump to access my original review of “Midnight in Paris.”

About Jonathan Lack

With ten years of experience writing and publishing for professional media outlets, eight of those spent focusing on movies and television, Jonathan R. Lack has emerged as a strong new voice in the field of film criticism.  He writes movie, TV, and music reviews, along with special feature, retrospective, and industry news articles, for the website Jonathan Lack at the Movies, named after the blog and weekly print column he hosted for The Denver Post’s ‘YourHub’ section from 2007 to 2011.  Since launching the standalone website, his weekly ‘YourHub’ column has been renamed Fade to Lack and continues to appear in The Denver Post every Thursday.

History

Thursday print edition of 'YourHub,' featuring

Lack's "Top Ten Films of 2011"

(Click to Enlarge)

In 2002, at the age of nine, Jonathan Lack began writing for The Denver Post’s ‘Colorado Kids’ section, a Tuesday print inset and website written by youth reporters aimed at a young audience.  Lack took over the section’s movie review responsibilities in 2004, and left the ‘Colorado Kids’ in 2007 to write for the Post’s new community journalism initiative, ‘YourHub.’  There, his focus expanded to include weekly television reviews and other entertainment articles.  In that first year, his writing was selected for “Brendan’s List,” the ‘YourHub’ chief editor’s compilation of the best blogs in the state of Colorado.  By 2010, his work appeared every week in the Post’s Thursday print edition, amassing a steady reader base in the process. 

Lack left ‘YourHub’ in July of 2011 to start his own website, Jonathan Lack at the Movies, an entertainment blog devoted to reviewing film, TV, music, and more.  Though he no longer writes for ‘YourHub,’ selections from the website continue to appear in the print edition on a weekly basis, in the newly titled Fade to Lack column.

Accomplishments

Lack has spoken at multiple writing workshops for youth journalists, recorded several Colorado Kids radio broadcasts for transmission on Radio Disney, hosts a monthly podcast available in the iTunes store, and has conducted interviews with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, “Madagascar” director Tom McGrath, numerous actors such as Jerry Seinfeld and Josh Lucas, Discovery Channel personnel, and the curator of the local Arvada Center art museum.  In addition to The Denver Post, he has been published in the Rocky Mountain News (via ‘YourHub’) and Golden Transcript.

Contact

Jonathan Lack can be reached via e-mail at dinochow@jonathanlack.com, or on Twitter @JonathanLack.

Photo by Emily Sandoval 

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