Tag: Joan Ellis
Scene On Film: '12 Years A Slave'
By Joan Ellis
Watching “12 Years a Slave” is an ordeal. It can also become, if we allow it, a major contribution to a collective...
Scene On Film: 'Parkland'
By Joan Ellis
On all counts but one, “Parkland” does a good job of filling a gap in the sad chronicle of November 22, 1963. We...
Scene On Film: 'Kill Your Darlings'
By Joan Ellis
“Kill Your Darlings” captures and holds an audience from first scene to last. John Krokidas and Austin Bunn – director and co-writers...
Scene On Film: 'Gravity'
By Joan Ellis
Gravity is a spectacle more to be admired than enjoyed.
Writers have been justly lyrical in their descriptions of Alfonso Cuaron’s creation of...
Scene On Film: 'Captain Phillps'
By Joan Ellis
One of the trickiest challenges in making movies lies in the phrase “based on a true story.”
In Captain Phillips, Director Paul Greengrass...
Scene On Film: 'The Family'
By Joan Ellis
Let’s assume you set out to make a Mafia spoof. A family enters the FBI witness protection program to avoid death at the...
Scene On Film: 'Prisoners'
By Joan Ellis
Prisoners springs from a growing trend toward explicit violence in serious movies. The more of it, the better.
When someone is beaten to...
Scene On Film: ‘Out of a Clear Blue Sky’
By Joan Ellis
Twelve years after Danielle Gardner lost her brother in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, she has made a chronicle...
Scene On Film: 'Closed Circuit'
By Joan Ellis
Far too much time has passed since the Brits have challenged us with one of the spy thrillers they do so well.
The...
Scene On Film: Elysium
By Joan Ellis
Elysium will make you shake and rattle precisely because it is threaded with credible foreshadowing of our future.
As Neill Blomkamp’s camera scans...
