It is a tried and true formula, and when it works well, one that can be endearing. Not original, but endearing. And so it is with THE HOLDOVERS, Alexander Payne’s beautifully realized coming-of-age tale set at an exclusive New England boarding school where the real lessons are not the ones taught in the classrooms. This… Read More »
JUNGLE CRUISE
Disney surprised us all when it turned one of Disneyland’s attractions, Pirates of the Caribbean, into a top-notch action/adventure/comedy. Alas, Disney has surprised us again, but with JUNGLE CRUISE, based on one of the venerable attractions from that ci-mentioned theme park, it’s more along the lines of disappointment. We relive that attraction in due course,… Read More »
MORGAN
MORGAN is a high-minded film that wants us all to ponder what it means to be human. Alas, the most ponder-worthy thing in this film, which once again shows the result of humankind playing God, is wondering how Kate Mara managed to do all that running through the piney woods in those very high heels. … Read More »
CINDERELLA MAN
Showing a lack of imagination and a willingness to mine every applicable sports cliché that is stunning in several senses of the word, Ron Howard has taken one of the greatest comeback stories ever and turned it into a cloying bit of fluff. CINDERELLA MAN is handsomely mounted, steeped in period art direction, and features… Read More »
LADY IN THE WATER
With LADY IN THE WATER, M. Night Shyamalan wanted to achieve two things. He wanted to find the magic that exists in daily life if we only had the wit to see it, and he wanted to get even with the film reviewers that didn’t like his last film. Or couple of films. In the… Read More »
THE ILLUSIONIST
Click here to listen to the interview with Neil Burger (15:34). A man in shirtsleeves sitting in intense concentration on a bare stage. The audience watching in rapt silence. Police lining the aisles ready to act. Thus begins THE ILLUSIONIST, a tale of sleight-of-hand, misdirection, and magic in many senses of the word. The only… Read More »
THE NANNY DIARIES
THE NANNY DIARIES rises above its whiffenpoof premise of a middle-class anthropologist charting the strange and treacherous milieu of an unfamiliar culture and comes up with something that is almost but not quite substantial. The anthropologist in question is the eponymous nanny, and the culture is the Upper East Side New York society in which… Read More »
FRED CLAUS
There is something wonderfully metaphorical in the image of a herd of 30 Santa Clauses chasing a contemporary Scrooge through the busy streets of snowy Chicago. The holiday season, whether we will or no, will force itself upon even those least willing to acknowledge it, much less celebrate it. The Scrooge in question has even… Read More »
WIN WIN
WIN WIN presents Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), a decent man and an honest lawyer beetling through life with financial worries that he meticulously keeps from his adored family. Keeping it in has given him episodes that arent quite heart attacks, but are enough to alarm his best friend, Terry (Bobby Canavale), into calling an ambulance.… Read More »
WIN WIN
WIN WIN presents Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), a decent man and an honest lawyer beetling through life with financial worries that he meticulously keeps from his adored family. Keeping it in has given him episodes that arent quite heart attacks, but are enough to alarm his best friend, Terry (Bobby Canavale), into calling an ambulance.… Read More »