MOVIE REVIEW
Date Night (2010)
Myles Aronowitz/20th Century Fox
“Date Night” achieves the impressive feat of squandering Steve Carell and Tina Fey behind the wheezy action-comedy aesthetic of director Shawn Levy. In films ranging from “Cheaper by the Dozen” to “Night at the Museum,” the now-veteran helmer has demonstrated a far firmer grasp of hoary broad clichés than the nuances of human behavior studied on “The Office” and “30 Rock.” Though well cast and sprinkled with the occasional dose of realistic emotion in its portrait of a marriage gone stale, “Date Night” mostly just spins its wheels through frenetically rendered, meaningless plot developments disguised as a narrative.
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MOVIE REVIEW
Chloe (2010)
Rafy/Sony Pictures Classics
“Chloe” is a slick, accomplished erotic thriller, made with a rich cinematic eye and flair for visual storytelling. Coming from director Atom Egoyan, a master stylist bestowed with a textbook comprehension of the language of film, that comes as no surprise.
Yet, the picture marks something of a departure for the Canadian auteur. It’s the first feature he’s directed from a script not his own — the writer is Erin Cressida Wilson (“Secretary”) — and in it he adheres to a straightforward, accessible linear template that avoids the fractured abstractions of a film such as “Adoration” or “The Sweet Hereafter.”
Continue reading “Bait and Switch in a Marriage Trap” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Green Zone (2010)
Jasin Boland/Universal Studios
In one sequence in “Green Zone,” Paul Greengrass’s latest shaky-cam thriller, U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) and his men carry out a dangerous mission inside the urban hot zone of Baghdad circa March 2003. After storming through the familiar crowded, dusty city streets lined with geometrically designed buildings of clay and stone, interrupting a meeting of former Baath Party big shots and coming away with a notebook of valuable information, their convoy enters a very different world.
It’s the Green Zone, the home of the Coalition Provisional Authority which oversaw the country in the heady early days of the occupation. Minutes after completing their mission, Miller finds himself in a meeting with a C.I.A. bigwig (Brendan Gleeson) by a luxury swimming pool outside Saddam’s former Republican Palace, with bikini-clad women, shirtless men sipping drinks and a general atmosphere more Las Vegas than ongoing war. Swarmed with diplomats that dodge piles of rubble as they ascend ornamental marble staircases and hold strategy conferences in lavish Byzantine rooms, it’s a surreal, provocative setting that perfectly symbolizes the hubris in the face of confusion that’s defined what “The Daily Show” deemed “Mess O'Potamia.”
Continue reading “Unlocking the Hurt” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Secret of Kells (2009)
GKIDS
“The Secret of Kells” shocked the punditry and just about everyone else when it earned a 2009 Best Animated Feature Oscar nomination alongside “Up,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and other better-known counterparts. Yet, this small, independent, hand-drawn film from co-directors Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey might be the most evocative movie of the bunch, a picture that relies on a potpourri of cubist and impressionistic sensibilities to tell a standard coming-of-age story in a way it’s not been told before.
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MOVIE REVIEW
Lourdes (2009)
Palisades Tartan
History has proven Catholicism to be the most cinematic of the Christian denominations. Drawing on a wealth of ornate iconography and millennia of artistic traditions/ceremonial pomp and circumstance, its practice incorporates sights, symbols and colors of remarkable visual beauty. There was, therefore, arresting potential for Jessica Hausner’s very Catholic new film “Lourdes.”
It depicts a mass pilgrimage to the mystical town in the south of France, said to be the site of repeated apparitions of the Virgin Mary. It centers on a busload of patients and workers from a Catholic hospital, who arrive in search of various forms of healing. Principal among them is Christine (Sylvie Testud), a nearly-mute paraplegic, content to look on at the righteous blur that surrounds her.
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MOVIE REVIEW
Terribly Happy (2008)
Oscilloscope Laboratories
Put the Coen brothers in Denmark, and they might come out with a film similar to “Terribly Happy.” An offbeat suspense thriller involving a corruptible policeman, a creepy insular town and a giant metaphoric bog, it’s made in precisely the sort of genre busting mode the brothers have perfected in everything from “Blood Simple” to “No Country for Old Men.”
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MOVIE REVIEW
From Paris With Love (2010)
Rico Torres/Lionsgate
John Travolta descends upon “From Paris With Love” with gale force, sweeping up all the innocuous Luc Besson action-flick chop-shop proceedings in a torrent of flashy overacting. He’s the primary reason to spend time with what is otherwise a standard, thoughtless shoot ’em up. The actor has done the crazy rogue shtick before, but never with quite the mischievous gleam brought to the character of Charlie Wax here.
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MOVIE REVIEW
Off and Running (2010)
First Run Features
Even by the standards of transracial modern America, Avery Klein-Cloud has had an unusual upbringing. The African-American, Texas-born adopted daughter of two Brooklyn-dwelling Jewish lesbians, they and her brothers Rafi (biracial) and Zay-Zay (Korean born) call their family the “United Nations.” With so many discordant background elements at play — such a clear sense of belonging in one way while being forever intrinsically removed in another — it comes as no surprise when teenage Avery begins an investigation of her biological background.
Continue reading “The Born Identity Crisis” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Creation (2009)
Liam Daniel/Newmarket Films
“Creation” achieves the impressive feat of reducing Charles Darwin and his work to fodder for stiff-lipped, cumbersome dramatics. It’s amazing that a story of the man behind the most revolutionary idea in human history could feel so flat and uninspired. But director Jon Amiel achieves the seemingly impossible by hewing to a stock chamber-piece approach that contradicts the wholly modern, innovative way his subject lived his life.
Continue reading “A Beautiful Mind Boggles” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Extraordinary Measures (2010)
CBS Films
“Extraordinary Measures” is not so much directed as processed, hewing closely to the cut-and-dry inspirational template. It’s a paste job down to the tiniest fibers of its being, with a soundtrack that contains Eric Clapton’s “Change the World” and lots of stock preaching about making miracles happen. The narrative effectively blends human interest with an engaging insider’s look at the biotech bureaucracy, but laziness is the operative mode here.
Continue reading “Clear and Present Disease” »