Let us frankly marvel at what technology can do. It can allow the gloss of an ape avatar to convey the most subtle and the most powerful of performances, complete with echoes of that human actor’s appearance, with flawless nuance. And so it is in THE KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. That same… Read More »
ROOM
ROOM is a profound meditation on the human condition, a meditation as bittersweet as life itself, and as uplifting as a child’s innocence. Based on the novel by Emma Donoghue, it confronts the barbaric simplicity of captivity, by contrasting it with the confusing complexity of freedom. What should be easy is not. Happiness is elusive.… Read More »
THE LINCOLN LAWYER
THE LINCOLN LAWYER is a smart, taut, and well-told neo-noir. The setting is Los Angeles, among the low-lifes and the well-to-do, where they meet and the consequences thereof. It follows the formula for such genre flicks, but has an impudent originality in the telling. The titular lawyer, Michael Haller (Matthew McConaughey) is a savvy practitioner… Read More »
THE COOLER
Love is a funny thing. You cant predict where it will bloom or what havoc it will wreak when it does. Thats at the heart of THE COOLER, another of those quirky parables set in Las Vegas where darkness and light fight it out and the outcome is, well, it depends on your point of… Read More »
CELLULAR
There are as many conceptions of Hell as there are people who imagine what it must be like. CELLULAR presents a very particular one. The one where the damned soul is doomed to wander in Los Angeles traffic for all eternity on an endless and hopeless quest, thwarted at every turn by traffic jams, idiot… Read More »
DOOGAL
When a film is released without a press screening, as was the case with DOOGAL, one expects to find in it a certain level of ineptitude. Here, though, is something that transcends merely being bad, merely inspiring a torrent of vitriol before consigning it to the more insulated portions of one’s memory. This has done… Read More »
THANK YOU FOR SMOKING
Aaron Eckhart should have been a much bigger movie star than he is by now. He’s got the dazzling good looks and the killer charisma required, but after several first-rate performances in little films (THE COMPANY OF MEN, YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS), fine journeyman’s work playing second-fiddle to powerhouse female leads (Julia Roberts’ boyfriend in… Read More »
BOBBY
It pains me to have to slam a film that so obviously has its heart in the right place, but BOBBY is such an inept and misguided effort that there’s no other option. Taking place on the day when and in the place where, the Ambassador Hotel, that the title character was assassinated, it’s a… Read More »