MOVIE REVIEW
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009)
Twentieth Century Fox
Given the unfortunate pedigree of a mediocre predecessor and an awful trailer, if you’d told me “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” would actually be worth watching, I’d have trotted out a cruise ship to sell you. Yet, I sit here at my keyboard hours after seeing the film, and I’m in a state of shock. Not only is the movie not a product driven forth from the fieriest depths of family film hell, it’s a fun, spirited adventure story that works where the original failed.
Continue reading “Field Trip of Dreams” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Easy Virtue (2008)
Giles Keyte/Sony Pictures Classics
Noel Coward was best known for imbuing his work with incisive wit, even in plays regarded far less fondly than “Private Lives” or “Hay Fever.” It’s that spirit most closely preserved by director Stephan Elliott in his adaptation of “Easy Virtue,” which most experts consider a lesser entrant in the playwright’s oeuvre. Unfortunately, the combination of cleverly-constructed, snappy dialogue and the filmmaker’s concerted effort to fill the film with broad, audience-friendly comedy cannot compensate for the narrative thinness at its core.
Continue reading “Bride’s Head on a Platter, Revisited” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Terminator Salvation (2009)
Richard Foreman/Warner Bros.
The original “Terminator” was the source of many a heart-stopping nightmare during my childhood, ever since watching a trailer for the film which showed an opening in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s calf and exposed the machinery within. The trailer left such an impression that I have no memory of the main feature it preceded. Then “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” blew my mind again with the melting Robert Patrick. Indeed, James Cameron left footsteps so titanic and impossible to follow that perhaps he just gave it up. The original film was a B picture with a $6.4-million budget, while the latest installment, “Terminator Salvation,” reportedly cost 30 times more yet possesses not one iota of originality in the hands of music-video vet McG.
Continue reading “Outrage Against the Machine” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Antichrist (2009)
Festival de Cannes
I don't know if it's smart, but I like it. Or more truthfully: I like the fact that Lars von Trier, consumed by whatever black humor and profound doubts fill his days, can create a film so uncompromising, so despairing and so wickedly contrarian that it defies criticism and explanation in equal measure. And I like that he brought it to Cannes and created a storm of outrage, the perfect backdrop for the friendly folk queuing behind me to ask “Wait, this is the guy who made 'Dogma?' ”
Continue reading “Drag ‘Em to Hell” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Taking Woodstock (2009)
Ken Regan/Focus Features
All these years admiring Liev Schreiber and it never occurred to me to wonder what he would look like in heels and hose. Wonder no longer. Mr. Schreiber's cross-dressing marine-cum-security guard is the liveliest thing on show in Ang Lee's "Taking Woodstock," an easygoing meander around 1969's legendary three-day music festival that ends up being neither one thing nor another. So Mr. Schreiber fits right in.
Continue reading “Happy as a Pig in Mud on Yasgur’s Farm” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Bright Star (2009)
Pathé Films
All the strongest points of Jane Campion's style – the banked-up emotions, circular rhythms and eye for landscapes – are on full display in “Bright Star.” Marking a return to the Cannes red carpet 16 years after she won the Palme d'or here for “The Piano.” Ms. Campion's new film follows an equally conflicted love story, and along the way confirms all over again that she is one of the finest directors of actors around.
Continue reading “Live Ever or Else Swoon to Death” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Angels & Demons (2009)
Zade Rosenthal/Columbia Pictures
“Angels & Demons” is a serviceable bit of nonsense from the Dan Brown pipeline. As a Ron Howard-directed film, it’s tighter and more exciting than “The Da Vinci Code,” but still hampered by a rather thorough ridiculousness. So much can be made of the insular, mysterious inner workings of the Roman Catholic Church, that it’s a shame such a ripe milieu has, for the second time, been reduced to common thriller fodder.
Continue reading “Vatican in the Spotlight, Losing Its Religion” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Adoration (2009)
Sophie Giraud/Sony Pictures Classics
Atom Egoyan’s “Adoration” takes a powerful, simple subject and mucks up its exploration with elaborate stylistic complications and moments of pure over direction. At its core is the grief-stricken story tinged with guilt, of a teenager learning to cope with the accidental death of his parents years earlier. Mr. Egoyan transforms that narrative into a murky rendition of the seedier side of the Web, and hampers it through the high-concept development of a premise centered on a convoluted role-playing assignment taken on with gusto by the main character and a central figure in his life.
Continue reading “Caught in the Web, Where the Truth Lies” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Management (2009)
Suzanne Hanover/Samuel Goldwyn Films
If, as some people believe, that the best comedy is grounded in truth, then it is no wonder that “Management” falls so flat on its face. The film begins with an unbelievable scenario and then proceeds to get progressively sillier as it goes along. Not that there is anything inherently wrong in silly – Monty Python made a pretty good career out of it – but it needs to work in conjunction with “funny” to be successful, and “funny” is not a word that springs to mind in the case of “Management.”
Continue reading “I’ll Be There for You, Literally” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Star Trek (2009)
Industrial Light & Magic/Paramount Pictures
Few cinematic ventures could be more fraught with peril than a revamping of the “Star Trek” franchise. No single pop phenomenon of the last half of the 20th century has amassed a more expansive, devoted following, and most ardent Trekkies tend to react to any changes to the canon as one might respond to the murder of a family member. Couple that with the fact that the most recent movies and TV spinoffs suffered a precipitous drop in quality and director J. J. Abrams can truly be said to have had his work cut out for him.
Continue reading “Boldly Revisit Where No Man Has Gone Before” »