MOVIE REVIEW
Her (2013)
Warner Brothers Pictures
These days, neither Spike Jonze nor Charlie Kaufman seems to have much fun working apart from the other. At first glance, the premise of Mr. Jonze’s “Her” suggests a return to zany form following “Where the Wild Things Are”: The new film concerns Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), a BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com writer who is in the midst of a divorce and developing romantic feelings toward Siri version 20.0, here known as Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). While parts of it are hilarious just as one would expect, the rest of the film takes on a surprisingly somber tone.
Continue reading “Your Wish Is Its Command” »
MOVIE REVIEW
On the Road (2012)
Gregory Smith/IFC Films
The urge to make movies out of things never intended to be movies — to put every cultural artifact with any potency through the moving-picture mincing machine and see whether what comes out of the other end, can reach the parts the original never managed to in some meaningful (or profitable) way — is a thoroughly mixed blessing. "On The Road," Jack Kerouac's freewheeling jazz symphony of youthful dislocation and post-war America reformation, lends itself to cinematic presentation not at all, so Walter Salles and writer Jose Rivera make some eminently reasonable compromises trying to squeeze the author's squirming text into a tidy box and sit on the lid. But one of them was to not actually use the roads that Kerouac's characters worshiped, instead forced by logistics to film in Canada and South America, and so depriving the characters and the rest of us of the chance to chase the same horizons that Kerouac had in mind. Of all the gifts that a film version could have brought to this particular story, forgoing that one leaves a dent in the grand plan: The America in this American myth has gone missing.
Continue reading “Lost Horizon” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Fighter (2010)
JoJo Whilden/Paramount Pictures
“The Fighter” isn’t this year’s “The Wrestler.” Think of it rather as the American riff on the “Animal Kingdom” milieu. Hardly anyone could possibly find this true story of Lowell, Mass., boxer Micky Ward (here played by Mark Wahlberg) inspirational because it so seeps with the same disdain for the underclass found in that Australian coming-of-age crime saga.
Continue reading “Low Blow the Underclass to Kingdom Come” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Julie & Julia (2009)
Jonathan Wenk/Columbia Pictures
“Julie & Julia” has Meryl Streep, solid production values and a vision of New York so lovingly rendered that a rinky-dink apartment over a pizzeria in Queens is transformed into a cozy paradise. It is, in other words, firmly lodged in classic Nora Ephron territory, unfolding with a relentlessly vivid color palette and a decided chick-lit sensibility with wonderful husbands ceaselessly supporting their hardworking wives.
Continue reading “Sleepless in the Kitchen” »
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
Sunshine Cleaning (2009)
Lacey Terrell/Overture Films
“Sunshine Cleaning” often adheres to Sundance archetypes, particularly those featured in another recent Sundance hit with “Sunshine” in its title. A happy-sad, quirky story of a dysfunctional family, the movie features wide shots of the main characters framed against off-kilter backdrops, close-ups on cathartic moments, Alan Arkin as a kooky grandpa and an oversized van.
However, the comparisons stop there, as “Sunshine Cleaning” quickly establishes itself as a work of more meaning and substance than its better know predecessor. It benefits greatly from the inspired casting by director Christine Jeffs and her team, and the insights into loss and motherhood professed by Megan Holley’s screenplay.
Continue reading “Sister Act Mops Up Blood and Tears” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Doubt (2008)
Andrew Schwartz/Miramax Films
John Patrick Shanley plumbs the depths of the soul in “Doubt,” first a play and now a film that confronts the toxicity of the fallacious belief that one’s convictions should never change, no matter the circumstance. It begins with a sermon delivered by Father Brendan Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) in which he says that “doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty” and segues into a compelling morality play surrounding that notion. Although the material worked better onstage – Mr. Shanley is a much better writer than he is film director – the big screen version boasts predictably terrific acting by Mr. Hoffman, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams and all the power and wisdom of its maker’s unique insights into human nature.
Continue reading “Suffer the Children to Come Unto Me” »