Scott Armstrong | The Moving Arts Film Journal

Articles by Scott Armstrong

6 articles

Sound of My Voice (2012)

Sometimes, maybe most of the time, ambiguous endings are cop-outs. The crime isn’t in subverting audience expectations—who wants movies without surprises?—but in betraying the stories themselves....

Nov 30, 2012 / Scott Armstrong

Essays

‘The Descendants’: A loving portrait of the 1 percent

Ben Stiller’s 2001 male modeling comedy “Zoolander” was released just a few weeks after 9/11. It didn’t do well. The consensus was that a contemplative America wasn’t interested in such aggressive...

Feb 25, 2012 / Scott Armstrong

Features

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

This is a tipping point movie. Through some pretty good work on some pretty good films, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp were able to build a deep reservoir of goodwill that saw them through some...

Mar 15, 2010 / Scott Armstrong

Action/Adventure

Taken (2009) ★½

Above all else, “Taken” painfully hammers home the fact that nothing can make up for a bad script. Especially when the script is not just bad, but painfully bad. Astronomically bad. Attempting to...

Mar 20, 2009 / Scott Armstrong

FCS

The dichotomy is familiar. On one hand we have the bloated studio movies packed with special effects and propped up with multi-million dollar marketing budgets. In the smaller, less publicized corner...

Feb 13, 2009 / Scott Armstrong

Features

Doubt (2008)

On the surface, John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt”–adapted from his own Pulitzer Prize-winning play–seems to explore, with a reluctance to definitively reveal, whether or not a Catholic priest molests a...

Jan 21, 2009 / Scott Armstrong

Articles by Scott Armstrong

Sound of My Voice (2012)

‘The Descendants’: A loving portrait of the 1 percent

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Taken (2009) ★½

The Visitor (2008)

Doubt (2008)

Recent Articles

Sections

Browse by Year

Topics