Hope Springs Review
RATING: (2.5 STARS) David Frankel (whose The Big Year was, improbably, both one of last year’s biggest surprises and worst films) must have quite a rapport with Meryl Streep. He directed her to an Oscar nomination in The Devil Wears Prada, and he somehow convinced her to star in his latest, Hope Springs—a film that […]
The Words Review
RATING: (2 STARS) Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal—the writing-directing duo behind The Words—go through such pains to make their film (which is about novelists) feel like a novel that it loses sense of its more cinematic qualities. The Words moves at a glacial pace. It’s overwritten. Its stately score and incredibly formal look make the entire exercise feel […]
Compliance Review
RATING: (3 STARS) Late in Craig Zobel’s searing psychological drama, Compliance, one character remarks, “I did a bad thing.” It’s the kind of realization that would have been useful 30 minutes earlier, but also one only hindsight could make so clear. Zobel asks his audience to take a leap into a very weird world where […]
The Ambassador
As a film, The Ambassador is fascinating. Danish provocateur/journalist Mads Brügger embeds himself in the dangerous and twisted world of the African business diplomat. With sketchy, black market credentials, the character he’s playing moves from Monrovia, Liberia to Bangui, Central African Republic in search of blood diamonds but under the pretense of building a third-world-saving […]
The Ten Best Films of 2012 So Far
It’s been a pretty good year so far at the movies. Yes, disappointments have littered cineplexes, but dig a little deeper, and the first two-thirds of 2012 have brought us some real gems. It always seems more appropriate for an August mid-year check-in, rather than a June one, because films are starting to hit DVD […]
Lawless Review
RATING: (3 STARS) It’s hard to think of a more appropriate title for John Hillcoat’s new Prohibition drama than Lawless (though the title of the novel the film is based on—The Wettest County in the World—is a close second). The film takes place in Franklin County, Virginia during the early 1930s—an area of the country […]
Premium Rush Review
RATING: (3 STARS) Pure adrenaline, it seems, is sometimes all one needs to sustain an entire motion picture. Take Premium Rush—the new bicycle messenger action movie directed by David Koepp and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The film hits a speed bump almost every time it stops for exposition. Thankfully, those instances are few and far between, […]
Bernie Review
RATING: (2.5 STARS) Richard Linklater’s Bernie works on a number of levels, but it’s hamstrung by an awkward, repetitive structure which features real-life individuals sharing their recollections about the film’s based-on-real-events subject matter. It’s indicative of Warren Beatty’s Reds—a film that employed this technique to great effect—but Bernie‘s small-town roots aren’t able to support a […]
Side by Side
One wouldn’t necessarily expect Keanu Reeves to be as much an expert on the art of filmmaking as folks like James Cameron, George Lucas, Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, David Lynch, Danny Boyle, Steven Soderbergh, and Martin Scorsese, but in the documentary Side by Side, he’s a very knowledgable window into the artistic and technical processes […]
Bachelorette Review
RATING: (3 STARS) Leslye Headland’s Bachelorette chronicles the misadventures of three deeply flawed women on the night before their friend’s wedding. Comparisons to Bridesmaids are inevitable because of the subject matter and the sex of its main characters, but this film shares much more in common with something like Bad Santa, which presents a series […]
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia Review
RATING: (2.5 STARS) Those who don’t take much stock in the old saying “Patience is a virtue” will likely have a hard time with Nuri Burge Ceylan’s Grand Prix-winning Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. The film, frankly, doesn’t tell much of a story, and it takes its sweet old time not telling it. You’ll […]
Footnote Review
RATING: (2.5 STARS) Joseph Cedar’s Footnote tells a very personal story in an impersonal and trivializing way. It’s Cedar’s unusual, energetic style that likely pleased the 2011 Cannes Jury enough to give the film a prize (Best Screenplay), but it’s these very same qualities that will leave a mildly unsatisfying taste in your mouth. Footnote […]
Savages Review
RATING: (2.5 STARS) With Savages, Oliver Stone has veered off the path of politically-motivated dramas and moved in the direction of a simpler, and sexier, crime thriller. This adaptation of Don Winslow’s novel isn’t as narratively dense as something like JFK, but it ends up getting bogged down in unnecessary exposition, which ultimately takes away […]
The Dark Knight Rises Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) With The Dark Knight Rises, the stirring finale to the wildly successful post-millennial Batman trilogy, director and cowriter Christopher Nolan laughs in the face of staggeringly high expectations and gives us perhaps the grandest of all superhero movies. The movie itself is this big, hulking monster—not unlike its main villain—but its flaws […]
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
There isn’t a sushi chef in the world more accomplished and admired than Japan’s Jiro Ono. The 85-year-old’s 10-seat Tokyo sushi bar, Sukiyabashi Jiro, is one of the world’s smallest establishments to be awarded three Michelin stars (the highest honor for restauranteurs). Director David Gelb’s documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi follows the chef and gets […]
Friends with Kids Review
RATING: (3 STARS) The premise of Jennifer Westfeldt’s Friends with Kids is irritating and feels false. A pair of successful, attractive, and personable thirtysomethings can’t find their soulmates, so they decide to have a kid together before Father Time catches up to them. These two serial daters are Jason (Adam Scott) and Julie (Westfeldt), and […]
