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MOVIE REVIEW
Skin (2019)
Guy Nattiv made a live-action short film called “Skin” that went on to win an Academy Award despite its reprehensible take on white supremacy and racial injustice. Then after pouting with his wife-producer Jamie Ray Newman at the press call backstage at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Mr. Nattiv went on to make a feature, also titled “Skin,” which deals with the same subject matter. Fortunately, that is where most of the similarities end.
MOVIE REVIEW
The Conjuring (2013)
Michael Tackett/Warner Brothers Pictures
To say that things go bump in the night in "The Conjuring" does an injustice to the volume of the film's audio mix, which has been calibrated to loosen your dental fillings. And to say that there isn't an unpredictable second in the film doesn't make it sound as much fun as it actually is, given the lengths that director James Wan goes to in keeping this particular haunted-house caper barreling forwards. Downplaying the Sam Raimi-flavor pastiche that tends to gum up this kind of exercise — at least until the end — it's a straightforward piece of mostly gore-lite atmospheric scaremongering, in which several fine actors make one another jump out of their skins while a punch-up breaks out in the orchestra.
MOVIE REVIEW
Safe House (2012)
Universal Pictures
Clichés in “Safe House”: skilled C.I.A. agent gone rogue, naïve rookie agent with superb talents, bureaucratic director, gruff and mysterious senior officer, unnecessary blonde girlfriend, shaky camera, fight sequences with quick cuts, an obligatory car chase, poor character development, a double cross, a triple cross, an action-thriller without thrills, boredom.
Most of the film’s opening act focuses on the illegal trade of a high-security file in South Africa. The buyer is Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), a rogue C.I.A. agent who is also wanted for treasonous activities in ten different countries. Frost plans to sell the ambiguous file for millions of dollars on the black market, but he is ambushed by armed men and only escapes death by turning himself in at the American embassy.
MOVIE REVIEW
Source Code (2011)
Jonathan Wenk/
Summit Entertainment
As the biological son of Ziggy Stardust, Duncan Jones has science fiction in his DNA. That God-given gift, when combined with the young Zowie Bowie’s grooming on movies such as “Solaris” and “Blade Runner,” might not have guaranteed that he’d become one of the genre’s premiere cinematic purveyors; but if you had to make a futures bet in the ’80s, well, you could have done a lot worse.
“Source Code,” his sophomore effort, is a safer, more streamlined venture than his ambitious debut “Moon,” a one-man show starring Sam Rockwell. Still, the filmmaker derives grand twisty pleasures out of the “Groundhog Day”-on-a-train premise, with the film’s smart contemporary allusions, its protagonist’s stark emotional journey and a Hitchcockian aptitude for creatively maximizing the potential of a constrained setting.
MOVIE REVIEW
Up in the Air (2009)
Dale Robinette/Paramount Pictures
As A. O. Scott and perhaps others have presciently observed, Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is this decade’s Jerry Maguire. The hero in “Up in the Air” is a self-made American corporate go-getter, whose sole mission in life is career success and the attainment of elite status (here via the rapacious accumulation of frequent flyer miles). Ryan is no stranger to director Jason Reitman, who brought us the soulless spinmeister Nick Naylor in “Thank You for Smoking.” Ryan’s eventual realization of the importance of family and companionship is similarly familiar territory for the man who also helmed “Juno.” This is a movie of few surprises, as our protagonist ultimately achieves self-actualization without compromising his capitalist principles.
MOVIE REVIEW
Orphan (2009)
Warner Bros. Pictures
Boxcutter in hand and evil-as-sin scowl on her face, a nine-year-old girl hovers over a sleeping boy only a few years her junior. First pressing the blade to the boy's throat, she then moves her weapon downward, stabbing dangerously close to his privates. As the now awake and understandably petrified kid trembles, the girl says with dead-seriousness, "I'll cut your hairless little dick off before you even know what it's for."
This scene comes shortly before the one-hour mark of the latest creepy-kid horror film, "Orphan;" but it's the defining moment – the instance where what seemed to be a conventional psychological thriller officially turns into a freak show. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, whose only other film of note is 2005's sub-par "House of Wax" remake, "Orphan" is a rather ballsy entry into a sub genre inhabited by the good (1976's "The Omen"), the bad (1993's "The Good Son"), and the underrated (2007's "Joshua"). Cast an unknown kid with an unsettling disposition, and then let him or her raise hell. "Orphan," however, ups the ante on all fronts. It's a messy film, plagued by inconsistencies that become loudly apparent once the much-publicized twist presents itself. If taken as nothing more than trashy camp hidden underneath a glossy mainstream sheen, though, "Orphan" is also quite entertaining, sue-me-for-liking-it fun.
Just wait until that see-it-to-believe-it scene twists its sleazy head.
MOVIE REVIEW
Nothing but the Truth (2008)
Yari Film Group
“Nothing but the Truth” melds politics and journalism – the primary dramatic interests of writer-director Rod Lurie – into one nicely compact narrative package. Inspired by the recent Valerie Plame scandal, the film matter-of-factly tells a story of the conflict between journalistic and governmental ethics. To his great credit, Mr. Lurie does so with only a modicum of moralizing and without ever pandering to one side or the other. He has a point of view to be sure, but he never lets it color things to a poisonous extent; and his screenplay unfolds in shades of grey.
MOVIE REVIEW
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
David Lukacs/Miramax Films
The new British film “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” comes from a long line of films about the Holocaust, a subject that can often be used as a shorthand for gravitas and importance. As a result, there seems to be the actual Holocaust (the murder of six million Jews) and the Holocaust of the cinematic imagination. These are images we have come to be familiar with: the red flags adorned with the swastikas, the cold, cruel countenance of the archetypal blond Nazi officer, and actors with shaved heads and fake tattoos on their forearms. “Striped Pajamas” is a film in this tradition. It tugs at our heartstrings while attempting to deal with horrors beyond our comprehension. While the movie does end up confronting these issues in a surprisingly complex way, it arrives at its point almost too late in the game to be effective.
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