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FILM
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June 9th, 2010
“Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” is based on the video game sensation originally created two decades ago, and is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the mastermind behind the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series. Though Disney expected this to be the start of another phenomenal franchise, it predictably turns out to be a lackluster letdown. Director Mike Newell hasn’t made anything amazing since “Donnie Brasco” after all. That said, it’s an entertaining two hours if you can embrace the fact that it is not to be taken seriously, and is meant to be a waste of acting talent.
May 26th, 2010
The last time we saw Jim Carrey this good, it was in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” Since then, he’s been, well, less than impressive (“23,” people!). After six years as a restrained and boring leading man, he’s back in full force with an unexpected role as a conman in love with... Ewan McGregor? Yup, he’s here—and he’s queer. In writing duo Glenn Ficarra and John Requa’s directorial debut, Carrey is living up to all the promise he had on display in his seminal work, “The Truman Show.”
May 19th, 2010
The “Private Lives of Pippa Lee”, the new film from indie director Rebecca Miller, opens with a dinner party in a tastefully decorated apartment, where a writer is toasting his editor, Herb Lee (Alan Arkin), who has just moved into a retirement community with his wife, Pippa, who is 30 years his junior. In the early scenes, Pippa is the kind of nice woman who is best described as bland, and she seems nearly comatose during family dinners and visits with the other residents of the retirement community. Who can blame her? She is mired in tedious conversations with her husband about gourmet supermarkets, and has to constantly monitor his blood pressure, lest he suffer a fourth heart attack. It’s enough to turn a single person off of the idea of marriage, especially to a much older man.
May 12th, 2010
Director Wilson Yip has done it again. In this spectacular sequel, he replicates his trademark fists-of-fury scenes from the first instalment while emotively narrating the patriotic story of a suppressed people.
May 4th, 2010
In theory, “Legion” has so-bad-it’s-good potential. God gets pissed and wants to wipe out the human race, but the angel Michael goes rogue in order to save our sorry asses. It’s the mother of all conflicts—yet somehow, the film seems like it’s nothing more than a tepid excuse for CGI.
April 28th, 2010
Roman Polanski’s latest film is a well-crafted thriller that trusts the audience enough not to rely on unnecessary twists or pyrotechnics to maintain its momentum. Rather than talk tough and act rough, the protagonist spends a good portion of the film poring over documents and making polite house calls—which sounds like a snooze, but in Polanski’s hands, even a mild-mannered writer seems a little like James Bond. The action is more subtle than a Bond film though, and the story seems like it could happen to any ordinary man, albeit one who is at the periphery of high stakes political intrigue.
April 22nd, 2010
“Date Night” can serve as a textbook example to screenwriters who want to write a good formula film—precisely because it is a BAD formula film. Though the film stars two of America’s funniest comic actors, Steve Carell and Tina Fey (with about 34 other stars making cameo appearances), but it is as helpless as the Fosters—Fey and Carell’s characters—at gunpoint, as they are for most of the film.
April 7th, 2010
Jeff Kinney’s whimsical illustrated novel Diary Of A Wimpy Kid sold over 28 million copies and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year. Now, there have been many recent sub-par film adaptations of books but this isn’t the worst of them.
April 7th, 2010
OK, so this does not quite pack a punch like any of Scorsese’s great gangster films. But still there is enough rough and tumble in this psychologically searing thriller to leave your head ticking over for a good while. Dennis Lehane’s 2003 novel has been given a thoroughly good working over by screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis, who along with Scorsese, has taken us back to the era of stylish noir thrillers with this ingenious effort.
March 31st, 2010
“The Fantastic Mr. Fox” is a fantastic little movie from the increasingly erratic American auteur Wes Anderson. The film, shot entirely with dolls and puppets in stop-motion, is a perfect fit for the meticulous Anderson, who has always treated his real-life actors and sets like carefully arranged toys, sometimes to great success (“The Royal Tenenbaums”) and sometimes to outré inexplicability (the stupid shark scene in “The Life Aquatic”).
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