Stan's Recent Reviews

Georges and Anne (Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva) are married retired music teachers, living out their golden years in a comfortable apartment in Paris.  After attending a piano concert by Alexandre (Alexandre Tharaud), one of Anne’s former students, Anne has an attack of some sort where she becomes unresponsive to Georges for several seconds.  When she snaps out of it, she has no memory of the incident and believes Georges is playing a trick on her.

Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) works in middle management in a financial services company.  He and his wife Trish (Amanda Peet) have two young daughters with another baby on the way and they are just getting by financially.  Sandy is very good at his job but the economy has prevented his company from handing out annual bonuses as they did in the past.  Sandy is called into the office of his boss Harold Cornish (Jon Favreau) where he’s told to prepare bonus checks for a select few of the company’s upper management, including Cornish.

Two young children, a brother and sister, are left in the woods by their father.  They are frightened and don’t understand why their parents would abandon them.  They begin walking through the forest and discover a cabin made entirely of candy.  Both children sample the delicious building supplies and think nothing of entering when the cabin doors open by itself.  Once inside they are attacked and captured by an evil witch who plans on throwing them in an oven and eating them.  The resourceful pair turns the tables on the old hag and throws her into the fire.

Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) is consolidating his power on the West Coast in the city of Los Angeles.  Cohen is a mobster who sees the city as his destiny and the beginning of a new era in crime.  Cohen and his men are willing to go to any violent extreme to ensure their power stays intact.  It also means his underlings have no room for error or they could be killed on the spot.  Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Parker (Nick Nolte) wants to clean up the city but has his hands tied by corrupt judges and dirty cops, both on Cohen’s payroll.