The Beaver – A Review

 
There may be a movie that could save Mel Gibson’s career, but this ain’t it.  Never mind the premise.  The Beaver is flawed from top to bottom because there isn’t a single scene you believe.  Every metaphor in the script is leaden; every possibility of black humour is ignored.  The family at the centre are a bad writer’s idea of a family.  And no homily is rejected as being too corny or undeserved.  Frankly, I wanted to flog screenwriter Kyle Killen with that damn glove-puppet.  His writing has about as much truth as an anti-aging commercial.  Make no mistake: this is a shallow precocious screenplay.  It’s all hat and no cattle, as the saying goes.  Like a bad ventriloquist, all you can hear is a lack of talent talking at you.

The Brave One – A Review

Movies are built on id. That’s why the bad guys have to die. You can’t grant movie villains a life outside their villainy. Bad guys aren’t there to be human, with a little good mixed-in even with the blackest of hearts; they’re there to stand for all those grievances we can’t address, for every noisy neighbour we might have, for every work colleague who gave us a slight. Movie villains die because, in life, most of us don’t get to kill anybody. The Brave One might flirt with questioning this vengeful need in us, but ultimately it settles for sating it.