July 1st, 2009
RATING:
Bank robber John Dillinger was so good at what he did, no law man could stop him. So the law got better.
The engrossing Public Enemies, directed by crime auteur Michael Mann (Heat, Miami Vice, et al), is about the showdown between the cocky, smooth-talking, slightly jaded Dillinger (a captivating Johnny Depp) and the up-and-coming [...]
2:50 pm
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Categories: film reviews
June 25th, 2009
RATING:
The thorny ethical issue at the core of My Sister’s Keeper is the stuff of juicy late-night debates: What if a family had a sick child and essentially engineered another child to give that sick child bone marrow and blood? And what if that younger, healthy child got tired of being stuck with needles [...]
3:47 pm
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Categories: film reviews
June 24th, 2009
RATING:
If a critic screams in a middle of a Michael Bay film and the film is too loud for anyone to hear, did it ever actually occur?-My thoughts, after leaving the Transformers screening.
Okay, so I didn’t actually scream in the middle of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. But I sure wanted to.
Part of my [...]
1:05 pm
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Categories: film reviews
June 19th, 2009
RATING:
I’m trying to figure out if I liked The Proposal more when it was called What Happens in Vegas or when it was called The Wedding Date or when it was called Green Card.
Come to think of it, I’m trying to decide if I like this story better when Sandra Bullock plays the demanding [...]
3:36 pm
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Categories: film reviews
June 19th, 2009
RATING:
John Krasinski’s character Burt Farlander is afflicted with something I’ve decided to call the indie stupor.
We’ve all seen this before, in films as varied as Garden State, American Beauty, Broken Flowers, and Elizabethtown. Our hero is a sheepish and sometimes benumbed observer of the wacky world around him. The wackier the supporting characters, the [...]
9:30 am
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Categories: film reviews
June 19th, 2009
RATING:
Jack Black, all gleeful id, and Michael Cera, all fussy misery, seem like a match made in buddy film heaven. Throw in writer/director Harold Ramis, a zany, pre-historic plot, and plenty of chances to bring hipster humor to the events of the Bible, and it seems like you can’t lose.
That may very well be [...]
9:27 am
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Categories: film reviews
June 11th, 2009
RATING:
As I was settling into my seat for the screening of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, a young man came up to me and asked, “Are you excited?”
“I guess,” I said (unconvincingly). “I really loved the original, so I’m not exactly sure why we needed a remake.”
“This is a remake?” the kid [...]
2:00 pm
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Categories: film reviews
June 4th, 2009
RATING:
When the trailer for The Hangover first came out—with its promise of a bachelor party run amok (tigers! babies! Mike Tyson! oh my!)—it became an instant YouTube classic. But I wondered, could the film sustain that kind of hilarity? Could it really continue to up the ante of outrageousness?
The key to a film like [...]
4:11 pm
1 Comment
Categories: film reviews
June 4th, 2009
RATING:
One of the reasons why A Chorus Line lasted 15 years on Broadway was not just because of the marvelous dancing and songwriting, or even because of the unique (at the time) behind-the-scenes glimpse at the Broadway casting process. It was because the stories of the dancers (this one too old, this one too [...]
11:55 am
2 Comments
Categories: film reviews
May 27th, 2009
RATING:
He’s baaaaack. Sam Raimi, the talented director who started his career with the cult comic-horror classic The Evil Dead and then gravitated to more mainstream work like A Simple Plan and The Spider Man series, has returned to the genre that made him famous. I’m happy to report that he has not gone soft.
Nope, [...]
10:05 am
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Categories: film reviews