Branko Starcevic/Focus Features
MOVIE REVIEW
You Won’t Be Alone (2022)
Mysterious portents and severe punishments abound in “You Won’t Be Alone,” Goran Stolevski’s feminist fantasy that could be slotted into three different genre boxes without being fully at home in any of them. Entirely set in the lush leafy countryside of 19th Century Macedonia, an enchanted world where at least one of the creatures in local folk tales is constantly lurking just out of sight, the film’s highly affected atmosphere and a languid breathy voice-over narration of knotted esoteric sound-bites will drive some viewers up the wall. So perhaps might its themes, not for their meaning so as much as for the chosen style of presentation, as if multiple different intentions had been squashed through the gene splicer.
Continue reading “Nature or Nurture” »
Kerry Brown/20th Century Fox
Fan fiction can be fun, but even the good stuff usually crumbles when faced with the simple question "Why bother?" The urge to revisit the "Alien" universe and shine $130 million worth of 3-D clarity into one of its perfectly satisfying corners of ambiguity isn't inherently a bad idea, although anyone hoping for "Prometheus" to show the actual Space Jockey from the first film or how he ended up on LV-426 is going to be disappointed when none of that happens. Instead the film shoots for the moon, declaring from the off that his mysterious species is responsible for life on earth and has been beckoning us to the stars ever since; a plot whose stab at religiosity shares more DNA with "The X-Files" than anything else, right down to the mutating black oil that the Space Jockeys use to create their monsters. "Prometheus" is fan fiction writ very, very large.
Continue reading “Spaceballs” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Prometheus (2012)
Kerry Brown/20th Century Fox
Revisiting the “Alien” universe was always going to be a risk for Ridley Scott. “Alien” was the film that cemented his reputation as a visionary auteur and is rightly regarded as a classic, a sublime example of atmospheric horror. Three sequels of varying quality established a sprawling world, one that Mr. Scott had long hinted that he was interested in exploring further — his interest particularly piqued by the mysterious Space Jockey, whose fleeting glimpse in his original work posed questions that have never been answered. While “Prometheus” puts that quandary to bed, its ambitions and scale are far loftier than merely acting as a prequel to the series — which proves to be a refreshing yet frustrating approach.
Continue reading “In Space No One Will Hear the End of It” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)
Daniel Smith/Warner Brothers Pictures
The easiest way to digest “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” is to pretend that the film does not concern the exploits of fiction’s finest detective at all. If one can convince oneself that Robert Downey Jr. is playing not Sherlock, but some rough-and-tumble Victorian adventurer — Indiana Holmes perhaps — then the film can be enjoyed, much like its predecessor, as a rambunctious but somewhat shallow romp. Naturally, one might notice the odd similarity between Conan Doyle’s creation and the hero of Guy Ritchie’s film; but that is surely mere coincidence.
Continue reading “An Icon Out of the Elementary” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009)
Knut Koivisto/Music Box Films
An epic-length murder mystery that takes in sexual abuse, serial killing, Nazism and incest does not sound like a barrel of laughs, and "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is indeed no picnic. Based on the famous bestseller by Stieg Larsson, it's a locked-room detective story worthy of Agatha Christie, transplanted to the chilly Swedish countryside and goosed into life by one singular and incendiary character.
Continue reading “Hate in a Cold Climate” »