Word: braff
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hypnotic short films I’ve ever seen—threatened to outdo the whole thing from the start. But the movie is also graced with another presence that recommends it, and perhaps also endangers it at the same time: the triple threat of New Jerseyite Zach Braff, who wrote, directs and stars...
...chutzpah as the latter, it’s a mammoth challenge. Not that Braff’s character, Andrew Largeman, requires anything resembling chutzpah: He plays a medicated, reluctant Jew, an aspiring actor returning home for his mother’s funeral. But if his style were any remoter, Braff could almost dissolve into the background of his strangely familiar, familiarly strange scenery. And, in one of his many pictorial feats, Braff as Largeman, wearing a shirt made from the same silk pattern lining the wall behind him, literally does...
...writer Braff’s surreal mix of dark and occasionally cheeky humor with generation-lost profundity is perfect for setting the scene, a mood that often feels more real than that of most still-coming-of-age films. And, while Braff the actor manages to justify and even enrich his numb character the more he weaves his way through a maze of “how old are we” house parties, fluorescent-lighting and tentative moments with a new girl, Sam (Natalie Portman ’03), there’s something awkward that still shouldn?...
Largeman’s underdevelopment might be chalked up to the medicated world in which Garden State is set as much to the aspirations of Braff the director. His eye for plaintive, sublime imagery is as impressive as his ear for awkward, funny situations, and smartly, the 27-year-old has used his big shot at Hollywood auteur-dom as an excuse not just to include great music (Iron and Wine, The Shins, Simon and Garfunkel), but to sew it tightly into the film. Indeed, his movie feels like a mix tape writ large, addressed to the thousands of kids...
...tale leaves off. CHICKEN LITTLE, who was struck by an errant acorn, has discovered that his crusade to tell the king "the sky is falling" was wrongheaded. The movie chronicles the exploits of the now infamous Little, hounded by the media, as he tries to redeem himself. Scrubs' Zach Braff voices the main character--the cast also includes Joan Cusack, Garry Marshall, Amy Sedaris and Steve Zahn--and says the recording sessions have been "so hilarious. We've been ad-libbing and improvising together." That bodes well for the computer-animated feature, which is due out next summer. Chicken Little...