Movies
Movies
Robert Redford is Aging But Ageless
The actor must be growing older but it doesn’t seem that way in 'The Company You Keep'
April 12th, 2013
Some actors are lucky. In the third act of their careers, they become dream versions of their own parents, or grandparents. Robert Redford is a slightly different case. Read more »
Movies
'The Place Beyond the Pines' is a Carnival Triptych
Blue Valentine director gives us a three-ring exploration of blue-color masculinity
April 5th, 2013
Movies
By the Book (of the Dead)
'Evil Dead' remake doubles the gore and loses the humor
April 5th, 2013
In the Book of the Dead, the barbed-wire-wrapped volume causing the fuss in Evil Dead, one lavishly illustrated page states that after the forest demon “feasts on five souls, the sky will bleed again.” Read more »
Movies
'G.I. Joe' is a Real American Zero
The movie is like a video game, but without the fun of playing
March 29th, 2013
Right in the middle of G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which is one sort of action movie, there’s another, better one that lasts five or six very good minutes. Read more »
Movies
'Host' of Problems
Stephanie Myers trades vampires for moony, body-snatching aliens
March 29th, 2013
The Host is for people who couldn’t handle the whirlwind pace of events in the Twilight trilogy and who prefer a love triangle unafraid to redefine, for a new generation, the word “lollygag.” Read more »
Movies
Movie Review: Spring Breakers
March 22nd, 2013
No animals were harmed during the making of Spring Breakers. But plenty of impressionable young and older minds will assuredly experience feelings of disorientation watching writer-director Harmony Korine’s candy-colored clown of a movie, which starts out like a salacious, rump-centric and blithely bare-breasted hip-hop video and ends up in the realm of scary and inspired trash. Read more »
Movies
Movie Review: Admission
This college-application comedy isn’t quite Ivy League material
March 22nd, 2013
Portia’s live-in boyfriend, a professor played by Michael Sheen, treats her like a dog—he literally pats her on the head and calls her loyal—and is about to leave their bed for that of a humorless Virginia Woolf scholar. On a recruiting road trip, Portia visits the New Quest alternative high school, run by John Pressman (Rudd), her college classmate. There’s an especially promising and quirky New Quest student (Nat Wolff) applying to Princeton. John has reason to believe this may be the same boy Portia gave up for adoption. Read more »
Movies
Disappearing Tact
In this crude comedy, dueling Vegas magicians can’t conjure laughs
March 15th, 2013
Good start, right? But the more you like the performers featured in The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, the harder it is to sit back, relax and enjoy. The comedy about Las Vegas illusionists on the rocks is thin, weak and sour. The typical gags involve burnt flesh and the sight of someone pretending to crush a puppy to death. It’s not a comedy; it’s a wince-edy. Read more »
Movies
Phoned-In
As a 911 operator, the skilled Halle Berry tries to save a girl and this failed film
March 15th, 2013
Representing a slightly skewed take on 2004’s Cellular, crossed with a lobotomized The Silence of the Lambs, Brad Anderson’s high-concept thriller The Call would be an unremarkable bit of women-in-peril dreck were it not for two distinguishing factors—the sexualized sadism inflicted upon the half-dressed 16-year-old Abigail Breslin and the equally sadistic Sideshow Bob coiffure affixed to the otherwise lovely Halle Berry. These indignities aside, there’s little to differentiate this high-pitched screamer from a particularly feverish Law and Order rerun. Read more »
Movies
'Creature' Consort
In the Southern Gothic fairytale 'Beautiful Creatures,' a teenage caster falls for her human classmate
February 15th, 2013
In the Southern Gothic fairytale Beautiful Creatures, a teenage caster falls for her human classmate. Read more »
