MOVIE REVIEW
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
Magnolia Pictures
Specificity is the name of the game in “The Girlfriend Experience,” the second of Steven Soderbergh’s planned slate of six digitally-made day-and-date releases. An arty work of direct cinema about specific people occupying a specific milieu during a specific time, it never pretends it’s anything grander. That frees its maker and his cast of non-professional actors (the lone exception being adult-film star Sasha Grey, who plays the lead) to experiment with style and improvised form.
Continue reading “The Business of Strangers” »
MOVIE REVIEW
O'Horten (2007)
Hans-Jorgan Osnes/Sony Pictures Classics
After a fling with American indiewood via a big-screen adaptation of Charles Bukowski’s “Factotum,” Norwegian director Bent Hamer has returned to familiar ground in every sense. His latest, “O’Horten,” invites comparisons to “Kitchen Stories,” his breakout hit here in America. Both films are set in Norway and revolve around men in the process of breaking free of their lifelong routines.
Continue reading “Next Stop Wanderland” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Dance Flick (2009)
Glen Wilson/Paramount Pictures
“Dance Flick” should, theoretically, set itself apart from “Epic Movie,” “Disaster Movie” and every other sub-subpar genre parody of recent years. It replaces the dubious duo of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the men responsible for those atrocities, with the Wayans family. The comedy legends behind everything from “In Living Color” to “Scary Movie” surely could not make a film that’s only marginally better than its recent counterparts, right? Right?
Continue reading “Stomp the Junk Yard” »
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” »