Jeff Baena has taken as his inspiration Bocaccio’s Decameron for his sly gem of a film about female frustration and empowerment, THE LITTLE HOURS. That 14th-century book is full of bawdy tales of people from all stratas of society behaving badly, and so they do in this film set very specifically in 1347. Like the… Read More »
BAYWATCH
One comes away from BAYWATCH wondering many things, none of them good, one of them why Spongebob Squarepants had to be involved. Based on the television phenomenon that swept the world a few decades back, this cinematic leap is neither faithful to the original, nor is it a loving spoof of same. It fails to… Read More »
THE ASSIGNMENT
The subject matter in Walter Hill’s THE ASSIGNMENT will make half the audience cringe in a way that the other half, no matter how empathetic, won’t be able to fully understand. And that’s sly. This brutal exercise in gender studies, masquerading as a biting action-noir fable, is rife with irony and with bald truths designed… Read More »
A CURE FOR WELLNESS
Playing on the most primal of fears is a time-honored horror tradition. And Gore Verbinski’s A CURE FOR WELLNESS does just that. And then continues to do so for an unwarranted running time of around two-and-a-half hours. This hodge-podge of dental torture, putative madness, and a very clumsy use of eels as metaphor wears out its welcome well before the final credits roll, skittering at the end, and pell-mell at that, towards an ending that is painfully obvious and even more painfully trite.
THE BRONZE
If the lead character in THE BRONZE were a guy, played by Seth Rogan or Jonah Hill, the raunchiness, bad attitude, and permanent scowl would be considered edgy, honest, and even hip. But Hope Annabelle Greggory isn’t the male of the species, and what is acceptable as fun and iconoclastic for those with two X-chromosomes… Read More »
MOONWALKERS
It’s not that I believe every conspiracy theory that comes along, it’s just that I have a serious weakness for the imagination that goes into some of them. And so it is with the theory that while Apollo 11 may or may not have actually landed on the moon in 1969, the footage that we… Read More »
PIRANHA 3-D
It all began with JAWS. The summer blockbuster that kicked off the summer blockbuster concept, that was fun and well-made and not too taxing on the higher cerebral functions. PIRANHA 3-D is a loving homage to that film made by people who understand what made that film great, and who understand how to make it… Read More »
GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, THE
At a key moment late in THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, a character is offered the choice between doing the sensible thing or doing the polite thing. He does the polite thing with dire consequences. The concept of politeness takes a beating in David Finchers turn at visualizing Stieg Larssons internationally successful crime novel… Read More »
HIT AND RUN
Watching HIT AND RUN, it is safe to deduce that writer, co-star, and co-director Dax Shepard is crazy mad for cars. Not just any cars, but the soup-up ones with massive horsepower, killer pickup, and torque capabilities beyond the ken of the standard-issue assembly line variety. Alas, his adoration for automobiles translates into a film… Read More »
TRANCE
TRANCE is a thing of grotesquely fascinating beauty, an evolved noir designed to provoke and to disturb in equal measure as it toys with the audience’s notions of absolute certainty. It begins with the winsome James McAvoy addressing the audience directly, his sadly earnest face a perfect picture of open honesty as he sets up… Read More »