Rex Reed
Recent Articles
‘Staking’ Its Claim
This low-budget horror flick does cannibals, zombies and vampires right
April 21st, 2011
If you grew up on classic horror movies, you must be as baffled and appalled as I am by the recent avalanche of movies, TV shows and airplane terminal beach books about lovesick vampires turning into goony-eyed romance-novel sweethearts who buy their daily blood supply at Walgreens. To Hillary Clinton, it may take a village, but to what remains of the American countryside gone to hell in Stake Land, all it takes still is a stake through the heart.
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Good Actors Gone Bad
The lamentable assassin story Hanna can’t be saved by its onscreen talent
April 7th, 2011
Royal blood doesn’t always wear a crown. Hanna is an incomprehensible pile of gibberish with great credentials: Joe Wright, who directed Atonement, reunites with one of its stars, Saoirse Ronan, the phenomenally talented teenager with the unpronounceable name, and the cast also includes Cate Blanchett
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Brooklyn Bound
Familial bonds are tested when one brother tries to escape to a better life in White Irish Drinkers
March 24th, 2011
White Irish Drinkers is a thoughtful coming-of-age story with bracing performances, solid writing and direction by John Gray, and inescapable take-home values that give you a feel-good lift. Set in 1975 in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, it tells the story of a bright, sensitive 18-year-old named Brian Leary (charismatic newcomer Nick Thurston) from a working-class family grappling with hardships to make ends meet and find purpose in a bleak existence.
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Slacker No More
When a lazy man finds smart pills, the possibilities for entertainment are Limitless
March 17th, 2011
The farrago of alternate-reality paranoia called Limitless opens with the narrative voice of the protagonist, a guy with a four-digit IQ standing on top of a building ready to jump, asking, “Why is it the minute your life exceeds you wildest dreams, a knife appears at your back?” The rest of this labored but lively contrivance tells you what went wrong, leaving out the part about how the thing that goes wrong the most is the movie itself. I can’t say it’s my favorite kind of hallucinogenic Alice in Wonderland cookie, but I won’t accuse it of lulling me to sleep, either.
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Mile Low Club
This story of a porn star’s rise to respectability could use some class of its own
March 10th, 2011
I hardly know how to describe a pornographic piffle called Elektra Luxx, but the word “abominable” comes to mind. Incoherently written and ineptly directed by somebody called Sebastian Gutierrez without a single scene of professional control, edited with pinking shears, and acted by an impressive cast that seems desperate to keep their Screen Actors Guild insurance and union dues paid while searching for whatever corner of the room the camera has been placed, it’s film of the kind of amateurishness that went out of style with Andy Warhol and his Polaroid.
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Plain Jane
This Victorian classic doesn’t live up to its past
March 10th, 2011
Nobody needs a sixth remake of Charlotte Brontë’s Gothic Victorian novel. But filmmakers just can’t resist the camera-ready thrill and romance of Jane Eyre. So it’s back to the Yorkshire moors, the birdlike stirrings in the unloved heart of the orphaned Jane, the creepy mansion of the brooding Edward Fairfax Rochester, the mystery of the screams in the night and the secret horror locked away in the attic, and the rest of the familiar territory already worn thin by the heavy feet of Orson Welles, Colin Clive and William Hurt. This version is workmanlike and nothing remarkable, but compared to the rest of the junk polluting screens today, it’s an elegant and welcome antidote.
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New But Not Improved
The highs and lows of the 2011 Oscars, now with more youth and technology
March 3rd, 2011
Red was the dominant color at the 83rd Academy Awards, and by the end of three hours and 45 minutes (including the red carpet pre-show), I was seeing plenty of it. If this was the year when some brain-dead jerk who never heard of the term “moving pictures” decided to move into the age of cyberspace, all I can say is “Go back to where it all started and show us some pictures that move.” Youth and hipness were promised, but neither was anywhere in sight.
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Just Plain Gross
The Farrelly Brothers flunk out with this disgusting tale of a vacation from marriage
February 24th, 2011
Hall Pass is garbage waiting for the dump truck. The latest assault on public decency from the pathetic oeuvre of the Farrelly Brothers is the same old swill, wrapped in odor-resistant disposable trash bags. What, you expected more? You thought they swallowed elegance pills? Any Farrelly Brothers flick (the word “film” does not apply) that doesn’t pander to the lowest depths of taste and intelligence would have the cinematic effect of convulsive electro-shock treatments in an insane asylum. Since no thought has been wasted on plot, narrative coherence, character development, direction, acting, technical artistry or anything that might pass for cleverness, I don’t see a point in discussing any aspect of this stinker in depth.
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Drown in These Rapids
This insurance-agent comedy is too dumb for its own good
February 17th, 2011
It just gets worse. Already off to a disastrous start, the 2011 junk pile grows higher with an alleged “comedy” by Puerto Rican director Miguel Arteta that is unlikely to connect with any comic-book reader sporting a 70-point IQ, but will undoubtedly be a big hit with the kind of people who thrive on Will Ferrell movies. Cedar Rapids is a ribald collection of stale corporate convention jokes, hateful putdowns of women and filthy one-liners you wouldn’t repeat at parties attended by middle-aged men wearing Chinese lampshades.
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(Not Quite) Golden Eagle
A hunky Channing Tatum goes Roman in this decent action flick
February 10th, 2011
Ambitiously set in the second century, The Eagle is a codpiece-and-crossbow saga of relentlessly exciting battle sequences sandwiched between tedious, unconvincing chatter about testy tribes, cantankerous centurions, fiery feudal warriors and camera-ready six-pack abs modeled by hunky pinups Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell. It isn’t going to win any awards for artistic excellence, but with two 8-by-10 glossies flexing their glutes from here to the middle of next week and an able support group including Donald Sutherland and Denis O’Hare, it’s not exactly a snore, either.
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