Kevin Bowen

ALL ABOUT JOURNALISM (Reviewer’s note: What do you do when you really like a film but disagree with it? You write a review like this.) I’ll start my review of The Rum Diary with a short explanation of why I ceased to be a journalist some time ago. Very simply, I never knew a journalist…

50% CHANCE OF LIVING; 90% CHANCE OF OFFENDING WOMEN If you hear the movie press machine tell it, I’m supposed to come away from 50/50 talking about how it’s a new type of cancer movie – frank, funny, and unconventionally moving – based on the real-life cancer experiences of its screenwriter, Will Reiser. Instead, I…

THE OBJECT OF CRITICS’ AFFECTION It boils down to this: Drive is a decent film, but I find the critical adoration being heaped upon it as bordering on reactionary. It’s fun to watch a team play in its throwback uniforms one game each year, and yes, Drive’s combination of sun-tinged neo-noir, eye-contact chemistry, gear grinding…

LOVERS OF COLD WAR SPY THRILLERS OWE IT TO THEMSELVES TO SEE THE DEBT Split between two settings, two time periods, and two casts, it’s no wonder that John Madden’s The Debt divides so easily into two levels of quality. There’s one part that I like to call a classy, sexy Cold War spy thriller….

SOMEHOW, IT WORKS We’ve reached the point that a significant portion of the English-speaking world (specifically, that bankrupt, riot-helmented, penalty-kick-blowing island named England) has reduced all acting to one thing — the ability to perfect the British accent. The land of Olivier has ceased caring about things like sympathy, emotion, delivery, comic timing. They are…

[NOTE: Film Critic Kevin Bowen is visiting his hometown – El Paso, Texas – and attending the third annual Plaza Classic Film Festival. The festival, running from Aug. 4 to Aug. 14, features 80 classic films. Bowen will write sporadic reports based on his viewing of the classic films as watched at the festival.] NOT…

[NOTE: Film Critic Kevin Bowen is visiting his hometown – El Paso, Texas – and attending the third annual Plaza Classic Film Festival. The festival, running from Aug. 4 to Aug. 14, features 80 classic films. Bowen will write sporadic reports based on his viewing of the classic films as watched at the festival.] THE…

A TASTY TICKING CLOCK Like any good pizza delivery driver with a bomb vest strapped to his body, 30 Minutes or Less knows how to get there, get the job done, and get it over with a second to spare. When it comes to explosives, every second counts, and there aren’t many films with such…

TWO GUYS WHO LOOK ALIKE SWITCH BODIES This summer, we’ve reached a crisis point in the American comedy: why can’t Jason Bateman get promoted or laid? The summer comedies are stocked with middle-aged men who dream of having sex but never do. That’s a healthy sign for marriage, I suppose. But if you’re a married…

IN THE HEAT OF THE IRISH NIGHT What is a veteran Irish policeman to do? There he is, tending to his rounds of bar fights and domestic disturbances. Stealing drugs off car wreck victims.   Indulging in lovely imported visitors from “the agency.” Thinking nothing of selling the IRA back their lost-and-found weapons. In The Guard,…

IS BETTER QUALITY THE SAME AS HIGH QUALITY? I like marriage. I do. At least in theory. I am unmarried, myself. But my parents are married. My friends are married. It seems like a good deal. So why is it that more and more, I find myself rooting against marriages when I watch them on…

LIVING (AND FIGHTING CRIME) IN THE PAST Henry Ford did not invent the automobile. But he likely invented modern life.   He then used his fortune to build Greenfield Village, a park dedicated to the preservation of the horse and buggy world he had nudged to the past. The further we go with technology, the more…

HORRIBLE COMEDIES Horrible Bosses pretends to be a movie for all people who hate their bosses, but really it’s a film for all people who hate film. Directed by Seth Gordon and partly produced by Brett Ratner, it’s the a classic case of a movie that doesn’t seem that wretched, until you start to take…

A PROMISING TRANSFORMATION:   ONLY HALF BAD A funny thing happened on my way to pan Michael Bay’s midsummer mega monster mash Transformers: Dark of the Moon. It turned out that I liked about half of it. Strangely, that would not be the gargantuan 3-D final hour of demolished Chicago skyscrapers, impossible Special Forces stunts, flying…

MATER THE SIDEKICK CAR Imagine that after   Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace George Lucas ditched the whole Anakin/Vader storyline and turned   Attack of the Clones over to Jar Jar Binks. If you can imagine that without crawling into a mental fetal position, then you can imagine Cars 2.   In this animated sequel from…

MEDIOCRE HERO Have you ever gotten into a conversation – and for the life of me, I hope you haven’t – about the supposed fascist underpinnings of comic book superheros? A film that accepts and teases this fascist nature is The Green Lantern. Test pilot Hal Jordan joins an interplanetary army built on the idea…

ABSENCE GROWS MYSTERY If Terrence Malick is a saint of cinema, then this is his holy lesson. Over a four-decade career, the mercurial American visionary has mastered absence and flowered a daunting mystery. After making one of the most impressive debuts in American film history, 1973’s Badlands, he quit talking to the press. After the…

WOODY AS WILSON, OWEN AS ALLEN Yes, you can believe what you’ve been reading – Midnight in Paris really is the best Woody Allen film in a long time. It’s a love letter to Paris, an ode to the Jazz age and the writers of the Lost Generation, and a romance with the past. It’s…

PACKED WITH ACTION, BEREFT OF LAUGHS Kung Fu Panda 2 breaks new ground in the history of cinema. Â  Everyone knows you can’t use 3-D in the second movie in a series. You have to wait until the third one. Breaking the 3-D sequel custom appears to be Panda’s lone innovation. Otherwise, this is one of…

WHO PIRATES OF THE CARES? The thing about Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – if anyone still cares – is that it’s an improvement for the series. But that’s just it…no one still cares. Of course, the box office will argue with me. A disturbing number of dollars will pile into the bank…