Pretentious, heart-on-sleeve New York movie pointedly set post-9/11: the blue beacons of light that stand where the Twin Towers once stood; the clean-up operations in the pit below the windows of one of the main characters; the Osama bin Laden wanted posters; the firefighter shrine at an Irish pub; the …
In the violent prologue, a ski-masked commando team of animal-rights activists storms the Cambridge Primate Research Center to liberate the experimental chimps, heedless of the attendant's warnings ("You've no idea!") that the chimps have been "infected" with rage. Sure enough, the chimps do not exactly embrace their liberators. Twenty-eight days …
Zombie recurrence in the U.K., under U.S. military occupation, and under Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (of Intacto) in place of Danny Boyle (of the original 28 Days Later). The scrappy, scruffy digital visuals are largely annoying (as if the zombies weren't bothersome enough), though there are some effective scenes, …
A couple’s relationship is put to the test when her adorable relatives decide to pay a visit. Never heard that one before, probably because I gave up on network sitcoms decades ago. Julie Delpy’s follow up to 2 Days in Paris is so sickeningly sweet, theater chains will want to …
Fatuous chatter between mid-thirties lovers, two years together, an uptight American designer and a carefree French photographer, visiting her parents in Paris. Julie Delpy, surrounding herself with her actual family, and showing unknown depths of self-indulgence, is the star, director, writer, editor, composer, and vocalist over the closing credits. And …
Just diverting enough, thanks in large part to the weary charm of Denzel Washington's undercover DEA agent, and the earnest charm of Mark Wahlberg's undercover Navy investigator. (The wiseassery Wahlberg uses to cover the earnestness, alas, quickly wears thin.) Thanks also to a willingness to make almost everyone at least …
Like Sin City, this takes its material from a "graphic novel" by Frank Miller, and in turn it takes from the film treatment of that one — or to be more precise, director Zack Snyder takes from director Robert Rodriguez — the same, or similar, unnatural light, "virtual" backgrounds, coarse-grained …
Casino heisters disguised as Elvis impersonators (including Kurt Russell, who had plenty of practice in John Carpenter's made-for-TV biopic on the King). Not the most logical starting point, this, for the slo-mo bloodbath that soon follows. The tone never does stabilize: coolness, callousness, phony sentiment, ga-ga action scenes, sadism and …
Zack Snyder, who has made a couple of comic-book movies of his own (300, Watchmen), wrote the script for this, perhaps his most comic-book movie to date. Some clarification is of course in order: "comic book" here indicates: a complete detachment from the actual constraints of physical reality (cascading sheets …
A tribe of subtitled vampires strategically targets the northernmost town in the U.S., Barrow, Alaska, hunkered down for a sunless month, free rein for nocturnal bloodsuckers. The majestic clouds and snowscapes on the last day of light ignite hope for a sense of style, but the superhuman strength and speed …
Fargo: the Next Generation? Perhaps, if by that you mean “brisk, violent, and largely unsentimental about the depths of human folly.” It’s also the least preening of Summer 2011’s many raunch comedies, content to spend its time among the genuinely raunchy. A would-be white-trash criminal mastermind (Danny McBride) straps a …
Honest-to-gosh Western, a rare sight in the 21st Century, thick as fleas fifty years earlier, when the original 3:10 arrived. The remake is done in the decadent style of shades-of-brown realism, luxuriantly whiskered and shaggy-haired, yet preening and grandiose, with amplified passions, topographical sprawl, and an overblown (and significantly altered) …
Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener) uses Max Ophüls’s dazzling La Ronde as a blueprint for this cluttered globe-hopping melodrama featuring an all-star international cast in various stages of grief and infidelity. The set-up is exquisite: the use of architecture and highly reflective surfaces function as serviceable tributes …
Moody and delicate — and imposing, if you surrender to it. Eric Mendelsohn’s second feature (Judy Berlin came out in 1999) considers a summer day in suburban Long Island. Kasper Tuxen’s light-entranced imagery wraps sensual sites around people whose feelings often fail to find words: an alienated husband (Elias Koteas), …