MOVIE REVIEW
The Heat (2013)
Gemma La Mana/20th Century Fox
Even though the buddy-cop subgenre gets an estrogenic makeover with “The Heat,” it’s no less chauvinistic — unless your idea of gender equality is that men shouldn’t have the monopoly on assholery. Look, it’s certainly a woman’s prerogative to be deplorable if she chooses. To think otherwise would be quite sexist itself. But “The Heat” derives its comedy from the most grotesque stereotypes imaginable of careerist women, as if the moral of the whole story is that women who are capable of being collegial while juggling family and ambition could never amount to anything.
Continue reading “White Chicks” »
Zade Rosenthal
/Paramount Pictures
“Star Trek Into Darkness” does a good job of building things up before descending irredeemably into a place where no one can hear you scream. At first glance, it has everything necessary to get our backsides onto the seats. It’s the latest in the long line of the “Star Trek” movies, and the second since director J. J. Abrams rebooted with some success back in 2009. But once you leave the theater, you realize how dark it truly was. The setup: While observing life on a planet leftover from “House of Flying Daggers,” Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban, whose brilliance in this part is underappreciated) set in motion a chain of events which require Lieutenant Uhura’s (Zoe Saldana) boyfriend Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto) to be lowered into an active volcano. To save him, a whole bunch of rules are broken, which bring Captain Kirk back to Starfleet headquarters to be yelled at by Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) and Admiral Marcus (Buckaroo Banzai himself, Peter Weller). The yelling is cut short when a villain named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch, who clearly studied at the feet of Alan Rickman’s performance in “Die Hard”) shoots them up. This sends our heroes on a secret mission to either kill Harrison, or maybe actually — since the only non-American lead character (a very uncomfortable Simon Pegg) reminds Kirk that they aren’t soldiers — instead bring him to trial. Oh, and there’s a blonde named Carol (Alice Eve) who at one point changes her clothes.
Continue reading “To Seek Out New Civilizations for New Life” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Internship (2013)
Phil Bray/20th Century Fox
“The Internship” reunites Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn eight years after the Frat Pack blockbuster “Wedding Crashers.” Instead of crashing weddings for free food, free booze and hormonal women, this time they are crashing Google’s Mountain View, Calif., campus for prospective employment and, O.K., free food. The freewheeling naughts have made way for the fruitless teens. Even those perpetual slackers who talk a good game can’t talk their way out of the paper bag that is unemployment nowadays. In the face of the rippling foreclosure and broken marriage, though, the Frat Pack keeps its sunny side up: Who cares if the Google internships are only open to college students? Let’s enroll in the University of Phoenix!
Continue reading “The Pursuit of Haplessness” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Fast & Furious 6 (2013)
Universal Pictures
Expectations are naturally low when you enter the sixth part of a franchise, unless you’re a J. K. Rowling fan and you’re watching "Harry Potter," and with "Fast Five" being such a lackluster affair, the expectations here are rock bottom.
To attempt to offer an outline of the plot would not only be pointless, but in a way would do the film a disservice. There is a story of sorts, involving some military bad guys and a MacGuffin (in the form of a world-ending microchip) but it’s so thin and clearly only there to allow the ridiculous action to happen, that it’s barely worth mentioning. All the gang are back — including one that was supposedly dead — and they’re all needed for one last job . . . again.
Continue reading “Driving, a Hard Bargain” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Zade Rosenthal/Paramount Pictures
With “Star Trek Into Darkness,” director J. J. Abrams and his cast and crew have crafted a follow-up film that feels like the second part of a two-part story. This new movie is not simply another voyage with the recast crew of the starship Enterprise; it also addresses and resolves some of the nagging concerns and problems some people may have had with the first “Star Trek” reboot film in 2009. The previous film, while funny and thrilling, was far from perfect, with the script feeling like a list of ideas cut and pasted together. A similar compilation approach has been taken with this sequel; but overall it feels far more cohesive than the previous entry, and it develops the main characters in important ways.
Continue reading “A Very Personal Enterprise” »
MOVIE REVIEW
I'm So Excited! (2013)
Paola Ardizzoni and Emilio Pereda/
Sony Pictures Classics
Hanging an apparent left turn from his recent forays into melodrama of various flavors, Pedro Almodóvar re-embraces high-camp farce with a vengeance in "I'm So Excited!," along with the chance to regrumble his annoyance at the current state of his home country. The result is occasionally something like oxygen starvation. In Mr. Almodóvar's very broad-brush comedy, a variety of hapless and horny characters cocooned in the business class cabin of a Peninsula Airlines flight set about coupling, confessing and — in the Kenneth Williams sense — carrying on. A raft of Mr. Almodóvar's regulars pass along the aisles, including Cecilia Roth as a former dominatrix with the dirt on Spain's elite and Lola Dueñas as a vaguely psychic virgin with a bad case of peninsula envy. Flagrant fragrant archetypes all.
Continue reading “Fly the Overfriendly Skies” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Some Velvet Morning (2013)
Rogier Stoffers/2013 Tribeca Film Festival
After working as a director-for-hire on a couple of Hollywood productions, Neil LaBute is back to the playwright-turned-filmmaker niche he carved out for himself 16 years ago with “In the Company of Men.” A two-player chamber piece, “Some Velvet Morning” is indeed very theatrical — perhaps more so than all eight of his previous film efforts. In what some – though perhaps not all – will find a welcome move, he’s returning to the provocative and foul battle-of-the-sexes arena that is his wheelhouse.
Continue reading “The Shape of Flings” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Michael H. Profession: Director (2013)
Yves Montmayeur/2013 Tribeca Film Festival
“Michael H. Profession: Director” documents the working methods of every cinephile’s favorite Austrian sadomasochist provocateur, Michael Haneke, at arguably the peak of a long-lauded career. One of the very first scenes in the film treats us to Mr. Haneke playing out that now-famous nightmare scene in “Amour.” It’s a breathtaking moment, seeing him standing in for Jean-Louis Trintignant in what was likely a blocking rehearsal which was then remade shot-for-shot for the actual film. In the ensuing interview, he commented that although his films aren’t autobiographical, his personal experiences do inform them.
Continue reading “Goad Unknown” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Rocket (2013)
Tom Greenwood/2013 Tribeca Film Festival
“The Rocket” has claimed three of the top prizes at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, winning the World Narrative Competition, Best Actor and the Heineken Audience Award. Set in rural Laos, the film revolves around a family curse brought about by the birth of Ahlo (Sitthiphon Disamoe). The misfortune that kindles the plot is a major dam construction project that displaces Ahlo’s clan. And that relocation has a domino effect all its own. Ostracized by even his own grandmother, Taitok (Bunsri Yindi), the 10-year-old Ahlo gravitates toward his friend Kia (Loungnam Kaosainam) and her outcast war-veteran uncle Purple (Thep Phongam). In hopes of proving his worth and finally breaking his family’s string of bad luck, Ahlo wants to compete in a local rocket festival, aided by Purple’s wisdom and know-how.
Continue reading “Rescue Pawn” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Look of Love (2013)
Charlie Gray/Studiocanal
Paul Raymond, not just a name to conjure with but the name to conjure with if any of your teenage years coincided with 1970s Soho, withstands most of the attempts made by Michael Winterbottom's "The Look of Love" to unpick his inner workings with outer shell safely intact. As incisive inquisitions go, Mr. Winterbottom opts to attack his subject with a soft cushion. Raymond's many supposed sins against British good taste and more certain crimes against his own family are presented as-is, side effects of a northern lad's uninhibited progress through the big city. Even the vast cultural upheavals happening in his country and on his doorstep — some with fuses lit by Raymond himself — can only vaguely be heard rumbling somewhere off in the distance, exploding out of sight and around the corner.
Continue reading “24-Carat Party People” »