There seems to be two ways to turn a TV series into a movie. Either you take the original show seriously and try to replicate the good stuff while making it grittier and widening the scope. This worked for The Untouchables and The Fugitive, while it was an abject failure for The Mod Squad and…
When you cast someone whose last name is Kitsch in a bound-to-be-cheesy sci-fi action film, you’re begging for a review that says that the movie is “kitschy.” And that would be a perfect description of John Carter, since the film is “a worthless imitation of art of recognized value.” (Thank you, Wikipedia, for that apt…
After seeing Wanderlust, I was exhausted and teary. Happily, it wasn’t a maudlin factory of crying jags, like some of last year’s Oscar bait. No; I just hadn’t laughed as hard at the movies since Bridesmaids. While not nearly as surprising nor as carefully and smartly written as Bridesmaids (which was deservedly nominated for an…
I broke my rule last week. I read a review of This Means War before I saw it. I only read one: Roger Ebert’s vicious pan of the film. While I’ve not always shared Ebert’s taste, I have developed a deep affection for him as a champion of independent movies, liberal politics, and, after cancer…
A few weeks ago, I watched Dane DeHaan, one of the stars of the new teens-with-superpowers movie Chronicle, answering questions at a press conference about what made Chronicle different from other “found footage” movies. He claimed that the difference was that every shot of film – every spliced together piece of camcorder shots, close circuit…
A few weeks ago, I pointed out that 2011 was a great year for queer cinema because of Heartbeats, Weekend, and most recently Pariah. And there’s a fourth film, which is now just opening in San Diego: Albert Nobbs, a period drama about what we would now call transgenderism starring Glenn Close in her best…
Last week, the Oscar nominations were announced, and nine movies are vying for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Why there are nine and not ten like last year and not five like there were every year for sixty years is a long and complicated story; it mostly involves a combination of preferential voting system…
Contraband, starring producer and Oscar nominee Mark Wahlberg (The Fighter, The Departed), is a gritty, balls-to-the-wall, intense, action thriller, that will keep you guessing, and interested, even though there are many holes in the script and too many close calls that are just not plausible. Whalberg plays Chris Farraday, a smuggler turned family man, who…
also playing The buzz on The Iron Lady has been that Meryl Streep is amazing as Margaret Thatcher and the movie isn’t very good. Since I don’t read reviews before I write mine, I’m not sure why the buzz isn’t that Streep is amazing and the movie is excellent. Because I loved it. Told in…
About ten minutes after the end of maudlin 9/11 drama Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I was standing outside the theater, feeling the tears drying on my face and the crying jags subside, and I got angry. I asked my friend who I now feel guilty for bringing along, “Why in the world was it…
