Category: Review
Les Miserables (2012) (Trailer)
Les Miserables (2012)
Some stories are so bulletproof that even a tuneless Russell Crowe can’t deliver a mortal wound. There are also some so prone to overwrought pathos that even a fearsomely committed Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, working every creative muscle in their bodies, can’t quite elevate to greatness. In Tom Hooper’s labor-of-love adaptation of the workhorse […]
Jack Reacher
A lunatic sniper fires off rounds from a parking garage, killing five presumably random people on the streets below. Identified by a fingerprint, the former soldier is arrested and promptly interrogated. In lieu of a confession, he scrawls on a piece of paper, “GET JACK REACHER.” Whoa! Who’s Jack Reacher? A former military criminal investigator […]
This Is 40 (Trailer)
This Is 40
In 2007’s Knocked Up — also known as the last funny movie Judd Apatow directed — Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) were the fractious married couple who served as a warning to the commitment-phobic Ben Stone (Seth Rogen). With This Is 40, Apatow makes the wildly unnecessary move of spinning them off into […]
Hyde Park on Hudson
You may remember King George VI, if not from history than from the Oscar-anointed Best Picture of 2010, The King’s Speech. He’s the charming, low-key fellow (Colin Firth) who inherits the throne quite reluctantly after his brother abdicates for love, and must overcome his lifelong stammer in order to deliver an address as England declares […]
Mama
Is there room for overt sentimentality in a scary movie? That’s the main question one encounters after sitting through the Guillermo Del Toro-produced/Andres Muschietti-directed fright film Mama. While the aforementioned Mexican auteur has himself included fantasy and romanticized elements in his own movie macabre (The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth), it appears his penchant for turning […]
Silver Linings Playbook
Though hamfisted at times and ultimately predictable, Silver Linings Playbook still manages to bring some real brio to a genre long since sodden with platitudes and empty humor. And despite some serious errors in judgement, Silver Linings Playbook is one of those rare love stories with actual heart. After coming upon his wife in flagrante delicto having shower-fun-time with […]
The Guilt Trip
Whenever Oscar-winning chanteuse and defiant diva Barbra Streisand decides to grace us with her presence on the silver screen, it’s an event. From her initial musical work in the ’60s to the screwball comedies and romances of the ’70s, her career choices have always attempted to match her well known in-studio perfectionism. So how does […]
Broken City
The movies love sleaze in high places. From the posh offices of world leaders to the local political scandal, film enjoys tales of absolute power corrupting absolutely-and those who would bring such despots down. So it’s no surprise when an effort like Broken City comes around. It has all the components for a competent thriller. […]
The Details
A couple of years back, the brilliant Coen brothers unleashed A Serious Man on unsuspecting movie audiences. The masterpiece of faith and fate, the film featured a physics professor nebbish whose own growing Anti-Semitism is tempered by a cosmic design to make his life as unlivable as possible. Within the dark comedic core was a […]
Promised Land
Dealing with the hot button environmental issue of fracking (otherwise known as the hydraulic fracturing of the Earth’s bedrock in order to release trapped natural gas), and featuring a wealth of talent in front of and behind the scenes, Promised Land should be better. In fact, it should be great, especially when you consider the […]
Killing Them Softly
Andrew Dominik’s first film with Brad Pitt, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, was an unusually reflective movie about outlaws, a languorous and beautiful western by way of Terrence Malick. (Pitt would go on to star in the actual Malick film The Tree of Life, as if having graduated from an […]
The Impossible
I live in San Francisco, the earthquake capital of the U.S. Since 2004, no one much talks about earthquakes any more. Now, the big spectre of death is the tsunami, international fallout from the devastating waves that washed away coastal Thailand and killed over 200,000 people. We haven’t had a significant tsunami here since then […]
A Monster in Paris
By now, the family film genre has become a bit of a cinematic cliche. Either every effort is measured against Pixar’s presumed perfection, or cast off as commercial claptrap from studios which understand little beyond marketing and the elementary school zeitgeist. Walking somewhere in between both is the fun, flawed A Monster in Paris. Produced […]
Save the Date
In the aftermath of so many wedding-centric romantic comedies, an alternative vision of the subgenre seems to be building: first Kristen Wiig and Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids appeared with a messier, raunchier take on a best friend’s wedding, then Leslye Headland’s Bachelorette went even darker; even The Five-Year Engagement focused more on its central relationship than […]
Django Unchained
For a few years, it appeared as if Quentin Tarantino would retreat into a movie lover’s paradise and never emerge. I’m still recovering from the six-year gap between Jackie Brown and Kill Bill Volume One in the sense that a new Tarantino movie coming out “only” three and a half years after its predecessor, the […]
I Wish
No writer/director is better at mining big human truths from the seemingly trivial details of daily life than Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose jewel-box like movies — Nobody Knows and Still Walking are two stellar examples — offer intimate slices of life in contemporary Japan that teach us about life anytime and anywhere. In I Wish, Kore-eda […]
Stand Up Guys
It’s boring, hacky, pandering, maudlin, pleased with itself, and vacant of almost any believable human moment, but at least it’s also stupendously sexist. This could have been a good movie, that’s what kills me, and not just because it’s got good actors in it because, frankly, Pacino misses the mark by quite a lot in […]