“Pirate Radio” – the new film from writer/director Richard Curtis (“Love Actually”) – knows exactly what it’s doing. It tells the story of Carl (Tom Sturridge), an 18-year-old recently expelled British student, who in 1966, is sent to stay with his godfather, Quentin (Bill Nighy), on his boat in the North Sea. From this boat, […]
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I didn’t expect much from director Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster flick other than a little dumb fun. “2012” couldn’t even deliver that. What follows is a short, and hopefully concise, review for a long, and depressingly boring, film (158-minute running time) that is about as almost as much fun as spending three hours alone in […]
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Even if you haven’t seen a movie about psychic Jedi warriors in the United States Army who kill goats with their mind, you may come out of “The Men Who Stare at Goats” thinking that you’ve seen a lot of it before. George Clooney stars in this adaptation of Jon Ronson’s non-fiction book and Grant […]
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Here’s a post about the validity of the film’s “documentary footage” and true story claim. Review below. Milla Jovovich, bathed in white light, steps into the foreground. As the camera circles her and abruptly changes angles, the actress delivers a spiel about the film’s production, its authenticity, our freedom to draw our own conclusions, and […]
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Robert Zemeckis has helmed his share of modern classics. “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” is not one of them. There’s so much in the film rife with potential and I frequently caught glimpses of what it could have been. But, sadly, it just didn’t amount to much. For one thing, it’s operating at cross-purposes. The contents […]
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From the minds of the Coen brothers comes this tale of a rather pathetic Jewish professor of physics in late 60s Minnesota. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is having all kinds of problems, from the serious to the mundane. Larry is indeed A Serious Man, and one whose existence isn’t likely to be improved over the […]
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Mira Nair’s biopic of groundbreaking aviator Amelia Earhart has many components working in its favor. It’s got Oscar-winner Hilary Swank in the title role, supporting performances from Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor, cinematography that ranges from elegant to breathtaking, and a really thorough sense of time and place. And yet it never quite pulls itself […]
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I’m pretty sure Ed Wood would have loved “Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant“. Messy, flawed, riddled with odd choices and questionable casting, and stuck with a plot that make less sense as it progresses, The Vampire’s Assistant is in every way a B-movie. And, I’ll admit, I kinda liked it. Based on a series […]
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George saw the movie during Fantastic Fest last month. Read his take here. Mine follows below: Rarely do movie critics talk about the actual experience of seeing a film in the theater in their actual review. It happens sometimes, but it’s usually presented as an aside (the film broke, the crowd responded this way, the […]
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“The Invention of Lying” sounds like one of those perfect high-concept scripts: In a society where everyone tells the truth, one man learns how to lie and takes full advantage of it. But there’s so much more going on in the new movie from Ricky Gervais (star and creator of the original British The Office […]
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It’s been five years since the one-two punch of Zack Snyder’s amped-up “Dawn of the Dead” remake and Edgar Wright’s loving tribute “Shaun of the Dead” made the zombie movie mainstream entertainment again. While not as clever as “Shaun” or as scary as parts of “Dawn,” the new horror comedy “Zombieland” does pull off a […]
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Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut “Whip It” is so overflowing with enthusiastic performances that it is impossible to watch it and not have a good time. Sure, you may notice an over-reliance on music montages to show the evolution of a budding teenage romance. You may also think you know where the movie is headed from […]
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From “Time Bandits” in 1981 to “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” in 1998, every movie Terry Gilliam made was marked by visual invention and a wickedly dark sense of humor that made him one of the most consistently fascinating filmmakers. Unfortunately, since “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” famously collapsed in 2000, Gilliam has […]
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The timing is right. The entire world is struggling to find its way out of a recession. Middle America is pissed off and broke. U.S. unemployment is soaring and the economic meltdown continues. So along comes the provocateur filmmaker who has spent the last 20 years raging against the machine, and he’s aiming at a […]
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With the exception of a few arthouse hits, the type of Japanese films that gain notoriety in America tend to lean towards the violent or random. Potentially a little bit “weird” for the art crowd, and a little too “art” for the weirdos, “Fish Story” (Fisshu sutôrî) is a breath of fresh air that deserves […]
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