For a film focused on teenage angst and invaders from other planets, I AM NUMBER FOUR shows a curious tameness. Based on the book by Pittacus Lore, directed by D.J Caruso, who made EAGLE EYE and DISTURBIA so much fun, co-scripted by Marti Noxon of Buffy fame, co-produced by Michael Bey of blowing things up… Read More »
HALL PASS
There is in the epilogue of HALL PASS a reminder of how gloriously demented a Farrelly Brothers movie used to be. Stephen Merchants hopelessly repressed character is offered the eponymous break from married life and imagines a series of interludes that grow more ridiculous and more dire with a geometric progression that ends in a… Read More »
THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU
The particular brand of unhinged paranoia of which Phillip K. Dick was a master, and then some, gets a respectful treatment in THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU, based on one of Dick’s short stories. It takes the warm and fuzzy notion that someone or something is keeping the universe creaking along according to a plan, as opposed… Read More »
LIMITLESS
Its the dream come true. A pill that allows a person to remember everything he or she has ever seen, access it instantly, and fire off the synapses in order to use that information meaningfully in any given situation. Too good to be true? Of course. And thats the rub in LIMITLESS, a spiffy little… Read More »
RANGO
RANGO triumphantly trades on the peculiar appeal of the well-executed excursion into the grotesque. Channeling spaghetti westerns, Cervantes, Castaneda, and a dash of CHINATOWN as refracted through the visual sensibilities of Dali, it is a fiendishly clever concretion of high- and low-brow in a story that is both vision quest and farce. The eponymous and… Read More »
BATTLE LOS ANGELES
BATTLE LOS ANGELES is a rousing and rip-roaring action flick expertly crafted by people who know what they are doing. And by that, is meant that rather than actively fighting the clichés inherent in this genre, they have consciously, even joyously, embraced them. By doing so, they revisit why the clichés have persisted, and by… 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 »
BRIDESMAIDS
There is more than a whiff of suspicion that the powers that be viewed an early cut of BRIDESMAIDS and made the unfortunate decision to hedge their bets. Rather than embrace a sharp, funny film about the many stages, and even more permutations, of female friendships, one that was unafraid to include the ribald, the profane,… Read More »
ARTHUR
Its not that Russell Brand has been wholly miscast as the titular character in the remake of ARTHUR, rather its that hes been given too much space in which to work. His performance of an impromptu and witty solo about being emasculated by his fiancee (Jennifer Garner) has about it the whiff of Noel Coward,… Read More »
RIO
RIO is as bright, fun, and dramatic as the Brazilian Carnivale where its final chase takes place. The animated musical as a whole is one exhilarating race to restore a bird to his human companion, thwart an evil gang of bird smugglers, and make sure that love conquers all. Eventually. The bird is Blu (Jesse… Read More »
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- …
- 147
- Next Page »