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Review: LES MISERABLES Delivers Most of the Emotion and Some of the Spectacle
When it became his privilege to direct the movie version of the Les Misérables stage musical that has enthralled the world for more than a quarter-century, Tom Hooper made one crucial, momentous...
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Review: GANGSTER SQUAD Is a Cartoon That Thinks It's Real
If Gangster Squad had been released last September, as originally scheduled, it would have been forgotten by now. There's a good chance it would have been forgotten by October. Instead, after some...
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Sundance 2013 Review: AUSTENLAND Is Clumsy, Unfunny
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single lady who obsesses over the works of Jane Austen -- particularly Pride and Prejudice, and specifically the 1995 miniseries version with Colin Firth...
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Sundance 2013 Review: UPSTREAM COLOR May Be More Interesting to Discuss Than...
Ever since Primer won Sundance's grand jury prize in 2004, indie-watchers have been wondering what its writer-director, Shane Carruth, would do next. Primer was his first movie, you see, and he made...
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Sundance 2013 Review: PRINCE AVALANCHE Delivers a Hint of the Old David...
Many reviews of Your Highness and The Sitter, two of the more pitiful comedies of 2011, featured concerned inquiries as to what (and in some cases what THE HELL) had happened to those films' director,...
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Review: IDENTITY THIEF Steals from Better Films, Comes Up Short
You have to admit, it takes some guts to rip off a hundred other movies and then call the result Identity Thief. That sort of brazenness would be admired by the scoundrel at the center of this...
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Review: SIDE EFFECTS May Include Whiplash From Jarring Change In Tone
The important thing to know about Side Effects -- which Steven Soderbergh says will be his last theatrical film for a while, maybe forever -- is that whatever you're thinking it's going to be, it...
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Review: BEAUTIFUL CREATURES Is Perkier, More Fun Than Most Teen Romances
There's a lengthy, dragging middle section of the supernatural teen romance Beautiful Creatures that threatens to sink the whole enterprise. Tellingly, it's when the nuts and bolts of the plot kick...
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Review: SAFE HAVEN Adds Another Bland Mess to the Nicholas Sparks Rap Sheet
Oh, sure, it's popular to make fun of Nicholas Sparks movies. It's very "cool" and "trendy" to pile on the insults every time a new one is released, three or four times a year. But do you want to...
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Review: Say Yes to NO
I assume you're well-versed in Chilean politics of the 1980s. I mean, who isn't, right? But even if you're not -- even if you're, say, an American who barely recalls the name Pinochet and is already...
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SXSW 2013 Review: GO FOR SISTERS Is an Easy-Going Character Drama from John...
Few filmmakers are more legitimately "independent" than John Sayles, who has now written and directed 18 features since 1979 (Return of the Secaucus Seven) without studio backing. His latest, the...
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SXSW 2013 Review: HOURS Makes the Mistake of Putting All Its Dramatic Weight...
All human beings have a talent for one thing or another, and Paul Walker is a human being, so Paul Walker undoubtedly is good at something. But whatever it is, it's not acting. Acting is not the thing...
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SXSW 2013 Review: HAUNTER Delivers an Enjoyably Tame Ghost Story
Time is a fluid thing in the atmospheric Haunter, but it's set mainly in 1985. It's the day before Lisa's 16th birthday. It has been for a while. Lisa (Abigail Breslin) and her wholesomely plain...
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SXSW Review: DRINKING BUDDIES Brings Joe Swanberg to the Big Time
Joe Swanberg's career as a filmmaker has gone through several phases, all without his name being known to more than a tiny fraction of the movie-going public. The inadvertent and unwilling godfather...
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Review: 42 Offers a Nice, Pleasant Version of Jackie Robinson's Story
The closest 42 comes to revealing anything about the actual personality or character of Jackie Robinson -- the first black player in Major League Baseball -- is when he privately expresses frustration...
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Review: SCARY MOVIE 5 Contains No Laughs But Much Poop
I'd be tempted to say that nothing in Scary Movie 5 is funny, but the outtakes that play over the closing credits show multiple cast members struggling to keep from laughing, so obviously I'm...
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Review: AT ANY PRICE Explores The Changing World Of Modern Farmers
"It's gonna be a great harvest," says a farmer's wife near the end of At Any Price. She's referring to the corn crop, but what this resonant, well-acted drama has made clear by this point is that "you...
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Review: PAIN & GAIN Mocks Meatheads, Is Meatheaded
Pain & Gain is a brash, puerile action-comedy of errors about a trio of muscle-obsessed idiots who set out to extort money from a sleazy Miami businessman by kidnapping and torturing him. Michael...
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Review: THE GREAT GATSBY Is a Class Assignment You'll Want to Skip
Baz Luhrmann's half-frenetic, half-subdued version of The Great Gatsby is almost 100 percent faithful to the novel in terms of plot, and almost zero percent faithful in terms of theme, character, and...
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Review: THE HANGOVER PART III Is Barely a Comedy
Remember how The Hangover Part II was a lukewarm rehash of The Hangover, almost beat-for-beat the same story, with little originality? Todd Phillips evidently heard our complaints and has addressed...
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Review: THE PURGE Satisfies Some Urges, But Not All
Some movies have good premises that get squandered in the execution, but The Purge is the other way around. It takes a bad premise and makes it work, more or less. You won't believe that any part of...
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Review: CALL ME KUCHU Sheds Light on Gays' Plight in Uganda
There hasn't been a lot of good P.R. for civil rights in Uganda in the last few years, what with its parliament's proposed legislation that would make homosexual activity punishable by death. Call Me...
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Review: THE ATTACK, A Sobering, Piercing Drama
The complicated situation in Israel, with its uneasy peace and frequent bursts of non-peace between Jews and Arabs, has given rise to numerous compelling stories, and will no doubt continue to do so...
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Review: MONSTERS UNIVERSITY Reunites Us with Old Friends
College is often a time of growth and development for people, and it's evidently no different for monsters. In Monsters University, Mike Wazowski, the spherical lime-green cyclops voiced by Billy...
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Review: THE STROLLER STRATEGY Is a Bad Idea Badly Executed
France has a thriving film industry, the biggest in Europe, with more than 250 productions a year. Of those, only a few dozen make their way into U.S. cinemas, usually because they're good, or have...
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Review: THE HEAT Is the Buddy-Cop Comedy We've Been Waiting For
Nothing will sink a buddy comedy faster than poor chemistry between the leads, which can seem unfair if the script is good. But the opposite is also true: a pair of actors with real comic energy, who...
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Review: DESPICABLE ME 2 Is Even Weaker Than the First One
In the pilot episode of the animated sitcom Despicable Me -- which somehow appeared in movie theaters, despite clearly being meant for TV -- we were introduced to Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), a...
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Review: GROWN UPS 2 Is Somehow Even Worse Than GROWN UPS
Believe it or not, Adam Sandler has never been in a sequel before. It only seems like it because his movies tend to be interchangeable. He plays a guy who dresses, talks, and acts like Adam Sandler;...
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Review: THE CONJURING Will Scare You, Not Scar You
Let's be blunt: most wide-release horror films are bad. They tend to be either watered-down, teen-friendly PG-13 mediocrities that aren't scary; or gruesome, R-rated endurance tests that aren't scary...
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Review: THE TO DO LIST Gets It Done, But Not Satisfyingly
In The To Do List, Aubrey Plaza plays a virginal high school valedictorian who decides, apropos of nothing, that she needs to spend the summer having every possible sexual experience as practice for...
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Review: WE'RE THE MILLERS Smuggles a Few Kilos of Laughs Across the Border
There isn't much about We're the Millers that separates it from the typical snarky, quasi-feel-good raunchy comedy, but it deserves credit for one thing: finding a new twist on the familiar premise of...
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Review: PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS Lacks Personality
Having missed 2010's Percy Jackson & the Lightning Thief because of reasons, and then never catching up with it due to factors, I was at a disadvantage when it came time for Percy Jackson: Sea of...
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Review: PRINCE AVALANCHE Delivers a Hint of the Old David Gordon Green
Many reviews of Your Highness and The Sitter, two of the more pitiful comedies of 2011, featured concerned inquiries as to what (and in some cases what THE HELL) had happened to those films' director,...
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Review: KICK-ASS 2 Sours Whatever Fun There Was The First Time
The first Kick-Ass movie ended on the usual superhero note: it set things up for a sequel. Ordinary high-schooler Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) had established himself as masked crusader...
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Review: AUSTENLAND, A Clumsy, Unfunny, And Insufferable Comedy
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single lady who obsesses over the works of Jane Austen -- particularly Pride and Prejudice, and specifically the 1995 miniseries version with Colin Firth...
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Review: THE BUTLER Has Admirable Intentions But Weak Execution
What The Butler tries to accomplish is so noble and ambitious that it almost doesn't matter how clumsily maudlin it ends up being, how over-earnest and sanctimonious it can be. It's heartening that...
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Review: DRINKING BUDDIES Brings Joe Swanberg To The Big Time
Joe Swanberg's career as a filmmaker has gone through several phases, all without his name being known to more than a tiny fraction of the movie-going public. The inadvertent and unwilling godfather...
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Review: RIDDICK Is More Fun, Less Riddick-ulous Than Last Time
No one expected there to be even one sequel to The Fast & the Furious, let alone five of them (so far). Even fewer people thought there'd be a follow-up to Pitch Black, the 2000 sci-fi thriller...
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Fantastic Fest 2013 Review: GRAND PIANO Executes Its Goofy Premise with...
Make no mistake, the premise of Grand Piano is 100 percent ridiculous. Do you remember Phone Booth, where Colin Farrell couldn't hang up or he'd be killed by a sniper? It's like that, only it's...
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Fantastic Fest 2013 Review: DETEKTIV DOWNS Brings a New Dimension to Gumshoe...
A lot of movies about mentally disabled private investigators are gimmicky and insensitive, but not Detektiv Downs! This is surely the most warm-hearted and clever Norwegian movie about a detective...
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Fantastic Fest 2013 Review: GOLDBERG & EISENBERG Is Chilly, Funny Stalker...
It's too soon to tell whether Oren Carmi is Israel's answer to the Coen brothers, whom he lists among his influences, but his debut feature, the darkly comic Goldberg & Eisenberg, shows promise. I...
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Fantastic Fest 2013: Twitch's Super Wrap With All Our Reviews and Top Fest Picks
All is (relatively) quiet now at The Alamo Drafthouse in northwest Austin, Texas, which has resumed its normal operations, with barely a sign that an 8-day celebration of genre films from around the...
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Review: HAUNTER Delivers an Enjoyably Tame Ghost Story
Time is a fluid thing in the atmospheric Haunter, but it's set mainly in 1985. It's the day before Lisa's 16th birthday. It has been for a while. Lisa (Abigail Breslin) and her wholesomely plain...
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Review: CARRIE Remake Stays Close to the Original, Still Works
It's been 37 years since Brian De Palma turned Stephen King's first published novel, Carrie, into a bloody camp classic, more than enough time for the idea of a remake to become palatable (not to...
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Review: GO FOR SISTERS Is an Easy-Going Character Drama from John Sayles
Few filmmakers are more legitimately "independent" than John Sayles, who has now written and directed 18 features since 1979 (Return of the Secaucus Seven) without studio backing. His latest, the...
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Review: THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE Kicks It Up A Notch, Sets the Stage...
Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy is a great read if you're into that sort of thing (reading), and it's shrewdly constructed. The first book, memorably adapted last year into a star-making vehicle...
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Review: HOURS Puts All Its Dramatic Weight On Paul Walker's Shoulders
(Review originally published during SXSW in March 2013.) All human beings have a talent for one thing or another, and Paul Walker is a human being, so Paul Walker undoubtedly is good at something. But...
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Review: AMERICAN HUSTLE Offers Laughs, Lies, And Toupees
There is indeed something uniquely American about American Hustle, a loosely fact-based comic drama about chicanery, ambition, corruption, government bureaucracy, and good old-fashioned greed. Nearly...
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Review: GRAND PIANO Executes Its Goofy Premise With Precision And Skill
Make no mistake, the premise of Grand Piano is 100 percent ridiculous. Do you remember Phone Booth, where Colin Farrell couldn't hang up or he'd be killed by a sniper? It's like that, only it's...
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Review: NOW YOU SEE ME Is Incredible, Not in the Good Way
When you see a magician do something in a live show that seems impossible, you know there's a trick to it. Either he didn't actually do the thing he pretended to do, or he did it by some method...
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