For a film that is based on a super hero’s ability to make anything he thinks of materialize in green glowing splendor, THE GREEN LANTERN is a film that is unusually flat in execution and uninspired in conception. It’s also painfully disjointed, as though there were a much longer, even more disappointing flick from which… Read More »
SOLARIS
In a move as audacious as it is disastrous, Steve Soderbergh has decided to push the edges of what filmmaking can be and created in SOLARIS not so much a motion picture as a still life. One that is more sleep-inducing than a warm glass of milk and a bottle of Seconal. It is remarkable… Read More »
WOMAN IN BLACK, THE
Daniel Radcliffe, fresh from the preternatural success of the Harry Potter films, stays close to his cinematic roots with THE WOMAN IN BLACK. A smidgen too young for the role of widowered father of a four-year-old, at least for 21st-century sensibilities, he and the film use the tender vulnerability of both his years and his… Read More »
10 YEARS
There is nothing unexpected in 10 YEARS, a tale of the eponymous high school reunion. Instead the emphasis is squarely on the similarly unsurprising cross-section of high school types, which is a risky proposition but one that pays off with a superior cast allowed to do what they each do best, and with writing that… Read More »
NOW YOU SEE ME
NOW YOU SEE ME begins with a giddy sense of mischief and ends with a contrivance that bespeaks the desperation of failing to plan for a proper ending. In between, it quietly devolves from slam-bang fun to barely coherent as four magicians lead the FBI and a debunker on a merry chase through ancient mysticism… Read More »
MALEFICENT
There is an old saw about movies that goes, “Dont tell, show” and, alas, MALEFICENT has gotten that backwards. wtih an incessant, distracting, and otherwise unhelpful narration. Its an unfortunate irony in that the film seeks to inform us of the other side of the Sleeping Beauty story, that of the evil fairy who cursed a… Read More »
CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE
<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”><SPAN style=”FONT-FAMILY: Verdana”>The nice thing about CHARLIES ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE is that it laughs at itself. And, because it doesnt take itself seriously, we get to be in on the joke. Its a flight of hard-body fantasy served up with a healthy dose of self-mockery and some slick action sequences.… Read More »
PIECES OF APRIL
Any film that declares Krispy Kreme donuts as proof of God’s existence is a film that has much to teach us no matter what our level of metaphysical enlightenment. In this perfect film, writer/director Peter Hedges astutely observes with sardonic wit and aching emotion the two great train wrecks of family life, the car… Read More »
DINNER GAME, THE (DINER DE CONS)
There was in France a game in which a group of friends would meet for dinner. Each would bring an idiot and the competition, waged without the idiots knowing about it, was to determine who had brought the biggest idiot. Writer/director Francis Veber, who also penned LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, has gifted us with his take… Read More »
BIG FISH
BIG FISH may be Tim Burtons most magical film to date. Paradoxically, its also one rooted firmly in reality, a la ED WOOD. Dont let that throw you. This is a landscape of the imagination as potent as anything Burton conjured up with EDWARD SCISSORHANDS or THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. There is a giant named… Read More »
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