MOVIE REVIEW
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Merrick Morton/Marvel Entertainment
The gang’s all here in “Iron Man 2,” the obligatory sequel to the extraordinarily successful 2008 comic adaptation. The first film helped redefine big-budget superhero cool, with the presence of the perennially bemused Robert Downey Jr. in the lead and the benefit of director Jon Favreau’s caustically hip perspective.
The second time around, the material suffers from standard sequelitis. Gone is the menace of the original’s virtuoso prison sequence, the serious regard for the details of the grounded real-world setting and with them the thrill of bad-boy weapons magnate Tony Stark (Mr. Downey) being transformed into an anonymous superhero in a giant tin suit.
Continue reading “One Too Many Irons in the Fire” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Get Him to the Greek (2010)
Glen Wilson/Universal Studios
“Get Him to the Greek,” the latest from the Judd Apatow bromance factory, is a spin-off from the “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” orbit. Brit comedian Russell Brand reprises the role of Aldous Snow, the pompous and wasted English rock cliché who could have been the bastard lovechild of Liam Gallagher and Amy Winehouse. Then you have Seth Rogen Jr., a k a Jonah Hill of “Superbad,” playing lowly record company operative Aaron, who has the unenviable task of escorting Aldous from London to Los Angeles for a comeback concert and dodging – albeit unsuccessfully – all the groupies, booze and drugs along the way.
Continue reading “From Here to Fraternity” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Harry Brown (2009)
Harry Brown Productions Ltd./
Samuel Goldwyn Films
Michael Caine is “Harry Brown,” the ads for this revenge thriller tell us, and is he ever. Giving a performance that exudes distinguished, barely disguised ferocity, the legend creates another of his memorable characters. He’s the only reason to bother with Daniel Barber’s middling, grim genre effort, a movie so wedded to a realistically subdued take on its age-old premise that it forgets to be any fun.
Continue reading “Raising Caine” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Centurion (2010)
Gaia Elkington/Pathe Films
Several centuries after they did their thing, the Ninth Legion of Rome are back in business. Kevin Macdonald's film version of "The Eagle of the Ninth" will be along later, bringing with it Channing Tatum as a Roman centurion. But first, here's Michael Fassbender and a handful of British notables being hacked into small cubes by pissed-off Picts in "Centurion."
The best thing about "Centurion" is that it does not shoot for the moon, happy to be a low-ball gore fest of hacking, and slashing, and guts by the gallon, the kind of film where if someone's helmet comes off, it invariably still has his head inside.
Continue reading “These Romans Are Crazy” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Ghost Writer/The Ghost (2010)
Guy Ferrandis/Summit Entertainment
Political thriller and political reality occupy the same space in "The Ghost Writer" (a k a "The Ghost" in Britain), as Pierce Brosnan's timely portrayal of a British prime minister in exile falls in sync with Roman Polanski's acutely tangled circumstances. Covered in Mr. Polanski's fingerprints, the film lets the director get stuck into his regular theme of small groups stuck in chilly isolation, and stirs in black satire about a misunderstood world figure looking simultaneously noble and a complete dope.
Continue reading “Uneasy Writer” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Milk of Sorrow (2009)
Olive Films
It is a peculiarity of the Academy Awards that a film's nationality often eclipses its filmmaker in the Best Foreign Language Film category. So it was not director Claudia Llosa who was named when "The Milk of Sorrow" was the dark-horse entry in last year's Oscar. Instead, that honor went to Peru. For some films, this would be less appropriate.
The movie begins with a black screen and the voice of an old woman singing about a rape. This is Perpetua (Bárbara Lazón), whose death forces her daughter Fausta (Magaly Solier) to reassess how she copes with her world. Fausta was born in the middle of Peru's recent terrorist uprising/civil war, and suffers from what is casually referred to as the "tit illness" — the pain and suffering her mother experienced before her birth transmitted to her via breast milk, and translated more metaphorically for the title.
Continue reading “The Mother of All Fears” »
Gianranco Mura/IFC Films
Filmmaker Marco Bellocchio has been tackling some of the thorniest aspects of the Italian national psyche since his 1965 debut "Fists in the Pocket." He has yet to show signs of slowing down, crafting vital cinema throughout the past two decades. Through the story of an atheist son coming to terms with his mother's candidacy for sainthood, "My Mother's Smile" energized Mr. Bellochio's recurring themes of the church and the nuclear family. "Good Morning, Night" explored the Red Brigade's 1978 kidnap and assassination of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. "The Wedding Director" lampooned a national cinema unable to reclaim its past neorealist glory. His latest, "Vincere," takes on none other than the infamous fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
Continue reading “Bellocchio Plays Politics With Film” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)
2010 Sundance Film Festival
“Exit Through the Gift Shop” arrives in theaters propelled by an avalanche of critical plaudits. British street artist/filmmaker Banksy has been hailed as a cinematic revolutionary, the creator of a self-reflexive masterpiece that gets at the essence of the precarious divide between the artist and the hack, the observer and the observed.
Continue reading “The Writing Is on the Walls” »
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.
Continue reading “Must Flee TV” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Highly Strung/You Will Be Mine (2009)
Little Stone Distribution
With an English-language title like “Highly Strung,” one expects Sophie Laloy’s film to have either a tennis or a string-quartet setting. It’s actually about Marie (Judith Davis, no relation to Judy), a pianist who must move in with Emma (Isild Le Besco), a family acquaintance her own age, in order to afford her university studies. Marie is disorganized but intensely committed to her studies, and soon — to her surprise — these include a sexual awakening. This awakening is without direction until the night Emma rescues Marie from a violent man in a club. Marie is very grateful, but Emma wants more. One thing leads to another, pretty much as you’d expect.
Continue reading “Steinway or the Highway” »