Film

FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE MOVIES THAT TAKE PLACE IN VENICE ONLY I suppose it’s at least a small accomplishment that The Tourist ends in the exact place that it’s been going all along — with its too mega-stars, Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, in white tux and evening gown, dashing and bejeweled on a sailboat…

NOT YOUR MOTHER’S HONEYMOON Picture one of those seaside cafes on The Riviera from the idyllic literature of pre-depression jazz age. Â  Everyone’s well mannered; clothes are pastel; sailboats bob in the sun; the air seems rarified. Young writer David Bourne Â  has just married rich, spoiled, pretty, poisonous Catherine. They’re footloose on an extended honeymoon. “I’m…

WHAT I DID FOR BALLET The Criterion version of the classic 1953 musical The Band Wagon includes a brilliant lost dance number by Cyd Charisse called “Two-Faced Woman.” Â  The lanky Texan with the French married name performs a delirious routine in a sleek black outfit. For all the Technicolor appeal, the outtakes reveal something you…

RAPUNZEL – THE INTERNET-RESEARCHED VERSION Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair / Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen ’¦. As a friend of mine noted, we are entering an age of collective amnesia. We no longer have to remember anything anymore. There are no long debates over beers about factual details. If there’s…

SUBMIT TO THE THRILL RIDE I loved Unstoppable. I loved every improbable, electric minute of Tony Scott’s runaway train movie. Â  I loved its ludicrous start. I loved its “Why didn’t they do that in the first place? Because then we wouldn’t have a movie†ending. Most of all, I love the fact that it’s red…

LIKEABLE FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS What’s wrong with being happy? Contrary to the evidence presented in adult-focused movies, you might never know there are happy people out there. Â  It’s true. I’ve ignored them at parties. But I never see them onscreen. In Morning Glory, Rachel McAdams plays a lemons-to-lemonade go-getter named Becky Fuller, with…

FOR LOVERS OF ROAD TRIP MOVIES Lately in movies there has been an epidemic of obvious music choices. For example, the Beatles’ “Baby You’re a Rich Man†ends The Social Network. In Due Date, a Motown song about getting back to my baby opens the film as expectant father Robert Downey Jr. prepares for a…

IT’S 2010.   DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR MONEY WENT? As I write this review, the Federal Reserve is embarking on a near trillion-dollar program that it hopes will stimulate the economy. Quantitative Easing amounts to Helicopter Ben Bernanke printing money in order to horse-whip capital off the sidelines and into circulation. You might think this…

MAN VS. ENVIRONMENT In movies, nothing good ever happens on a mountain. Unless you’re Julie Andrews, and good things happen to you everywhere. There’s Kevin MacDonald’s documentary Touching the Void, about a mountain-climbing expedition shot to hell. And what was that mountain disaster movie that at first advertised its cannibalism but later changed to a…

A PRETTY GOOD FILM JUST OPENED. HELLO?   IS ANYONE LISTENING? Why are so few people talking about Conviction? Is it boring to talk about Hilary Swank being very strong in a quintessentially awards-style role? Over-awarded or not, it shouldn’t stop talk of how real and involving she is as Betty Anne Waters, a Massachusetts waitress…

VIOLATED CINEMA RULE PROVES PROPHETIC TO ENSUING MEDIOCRITY “Roger that.†They were trying to sneak that one past me. The first Bowen Rule of the Cinema: There has never been a good movie that contains the phrase “Copy that.†But what if they say, “Roger that,†instead? What then? Does the rule apply? Let’s face…

A WOMAN AND HER HORSE Poor Sham. In 1973, the magnificent chocolate stallion ran the second fastest time in the history of the Kentucky Derby. His mark remains to this day. He probably had the talent to win horse racing’s Triple Crown. Instead, he has gone down as the forgotten rival to a horse whose…

PLEASE “LIKE” THIS REVIEW I know I’m supposed to get out and help push. The fight for great cinema is on, and I’m expected to throw it into neutral, hop out, and chug-chug-chug with my hands on the door. We all have to get behind The Social Network and push the crowds to every mall…

WE’RE # 1 IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS THAT SUCK!!! I don’t like to pull out the phrases “important movie†and “This is the one movie you should see.†But if I had to describe a movie as important, and had to say there is one movie you should see, it’s Waiting For Superman. That’s not to…

CONSIDER LARGELY LETTING IN, EVEN IF NOT QUITE THE RIGHT ONE Life is unfair to middle children and remakes. If Matt Reeves’ vampire coming-of-age story Let Me In had been made before the Swedish original, Tomas Alfredsson’s Let The Right One In, would we automatically think it was the better of the two? Â  It didn’t…

KALEIDOSCOPIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST? For l-o-n-g minutes at a time during Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void, you, the filmgoer, are sure you’ve fallen, not down a rabbit hole, but into a kaleidoscope whose shaft is being manipulated by a madman. All you see on the screen are bright colors, pulsating lights, blankness, whiteness, geometric designs,…

THE WORLD IN AN ALTERNATE HISTORY At first sight, Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go is the Harry Potter film for a modern dystopia. It nails much of what I dislike about Hogwarts Academy – Â  the conformity, the noble-minded authoritarianism, the obedient little drone who achieves heroism through obedience and destiny rather than sacrifice. Created…

OMIGOD! Â  ANOTHER CLASSIC TOTALLY UPDATED! The Easy A might well be for a class in astronomy. This is supposed to be the movie in which the redhead “It” Girl Emma Stone (Superbad, Zombieland) is born as a star. If dying stars turn into black holes, sucking everything around them into eternal darkness, then movie stardom…

MORE REASONS TO LAMENT THE INTERNET The Internet was born out of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Military planners were confronted with the question of how to maintain command and control during a nuclear war. A decentralized method of electronic communication was proposed, leading to a communications system that could transport information long distances almost instantaneously….