DEAR JOHN continues the translation from page to screen of wholesome romances devised by genre juggernaut Nicholas Sparks. This one weaves 9/11 into a story about the distances between people and the difficulties in bridging them, whether those distances are spatial or emotional. Our lovely couple are Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) and John (Channing Tatum), two… Read More »
VALENTINE’S DAY
VALENTINE’S DAY is a mixed bag of genially unchallenging material designed to appeal to the widest possible audience without actively alienating anybody. It’s a formula that leaves little leeway for anything of a whiz bang nature. Using multiple story lines all loosely centered around a florist helps segregate the dreck from the more entertaining snippets,… Read More »
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS
Spaghetti has never been more terrifying, Gummi bears more menacing, nor the pleasures and perils of exploring the frontiers of science more vivid than in CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS. Based on the novel of the same name by Judi and Ron Barret, and brought to glorious animated life, its got clever dialogue and… Read More »
SHUTTER ISLAND
It’s no great trick to work out the twist in SHUTTER ISLAND, nor is having done so any great hindrance to enjoying this latest collaboration between Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. In fact, the clues judiciously scattered throughout the film all but demand that the audience figure out that one small piece of the puzzle… Read More »
COP OUT
COP OUT is such a mess that picking out any single element for richly deserved damnation is to lessen the awful impact of a whole that is so much more than the sum of its parts. Badly written, uncertainly directed, and acted by his two stars, Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis, as though they had… Read More »
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Tim Burton, wanting to put his own stamp on ALICE IN WONDERLAND, has wandered not just far from the story, but from the very essence of what Lewis Carroll created. Rather than a Wonderland full of terrifying adventures and deliciously absurd whimsy, he has created the Underland, a place of terrifyingly, yet lugubrious, bad filmmaking.… Read More »
BROOKLYN’S FINEST
BROOKLYN’S FINEST is an object lesson in situational ethics played without the comforting buffer of impersonal hypothesis. The eponymous cops in question are neither heroes nor villains, rather they are basically decent guys pushed to the limits that have warped their perceptions of right and wrong as considered moment by moment. Not for them is… Read More »
REMEMBER ME
REMEMBER ME is a turgid excuse for a perceptive character study/romance that pins its hopes on a twist that is not so much a jolt as an affront. Not to give anything away, at least not more than the film itself in its opening moments, but suffice to say that the main action takes place… Read More »
SHE’S OUT OF MY LEAGUE
There is an old saying that goes if something seems to good to be true, it probably is. It’s a saying that will get quite a workout over the course of SHE’S OUT OF MY LEAGUE, an amiable romantic comedy that pits common sense against romantic reverie while also examining the perils of being a… Read More »
BOUNTY HUNTER, THE
THE BOUNTY HUNTER is a tedious slog through tidy coincidences starting with the premise. A divorced couple meet again when she, a crack reporter on the trail of a bombshell story, jumps bail and he, the eponymous bounty hunter, is tasked with bringing her in. That’s about 15 minutes worth of good story line. Twenty… Read More »
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