Armin Mueller-Stahl and Ewan McGregor acting the hell out of their roles
So far Angels and Demons has racked up a pile of money and a load of bad reviews. It deserves the bad reviews, …
Posted on: May 18th, 2009 | Comments (9)
So Star Trek ’09 is out, it’s a big hit, and response to it is way over the top. This is highly enjoyable if you like to see people grappling with a popular culture artifact as if their …
Posted on: May 11th, 2009 | Comments (23)
A short while back I wrote a review for the appalling hit movie Twilight, mourning the fact that vampires and werewolves were being ruined by soft-serve sex fantasy addicts, but rejoicing that at least zombies were safe. No way to …
Posted on: April 20th, 2009 | Comments (31)
We’re monitoring the development of theatrical 3-D, which is supposed to revolutionize the cinematic experience as we know it. It’s currently being tested out in animated films like Monsters vs. Aliens and Coraline, and is soon to be unleashed in …
Posted on: March 29th, 2009 | Comments (12)
This is a vengeful slagging of previews I’ve seen at least ten-thousand times, maybe through bad luck, bad timing, bad karma, it’s hard to say. They’re all for movies opening March 20th. Except for The Soloist, which may never open, …
Posted on: March 15th, 2009 | Comments (17)
Watchmen is one of those movies that is so thoroughly slimed with promos and recycled opinions by the time it opens, you’re already sick of it. The film industry term for this is “a saturation release,” meaning a liquid shitstorm …
Posted on: March 9th, 2009 | Comments (27)
If you haven’t seen a slasher film lately, Marcus Nisbett’s reboot of Friday the 13th feels paradoxically fresh. That’s probably because the genre is delivering a very specific product, so well-tested in eleven sequels that the only real challenge is …
Posted on: February 22nd, 2009 | Comments (16)
There’s a shootout at the Guggenheim Museum in the middle of The International that’s about as cheery a spectacle as an action film can offer. One minute a cathedral hush prevails in Frank Lloyd Wright’s creamy architectural spiral, …
Posted on: February 15th, 2009 | Comments (7)
This will necessarily be a short article.
The Academy Awards are so great because they keep us in touch with the ratty old values of our forefathers and foremothers. We no longer know how to churn butter, or why it’s improper …
Posted on: February 8th, 2009 | Comments (9)
Liam Neeson tries to be reasonable.
Genre films are beginning to creep back into theaters after the big parade of Oscar-contenders—praise be to God—and one of them, a little actioner called Taken, is now tops at the box-office and …
Posted on: February 1st, 2009 | Comments (16)
Ossified baby, anyone?
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button—is it one of the worst American films of 2008, or THE worst American film of 2008? Can’t be the worst, you’ll argue, not while we have Australia to …
Posted on: January 7th, 2009 | Comments (12)
Klaatu has a bad day.
Number One at the box-office over the weekend, The Day the Earth Stood Still is a great study in all the things that can go wrong with a movie. The plot’s all …
Posted on: December 16th, 2008 | Comments (2)
The problem with Twilight isn’t that it’s an embarrassing fantasy for teenage girls—hell, I was a teenage girl myself once, so whatever celluloid dreams get the poor addled kids through seventh grade are okay by me. No, the problem is that Twilight …
Posted on: November 25th, 2008 | Comments (17)
Daniel Craig working on his stance.
The ultimate proof that movies these days are rotten: Quantum of Solace is breaking records at the box office. It’s not the public’s fault; people want to see something move onscreen …
Posted on: November 17th, 2008 | Comments (7)
