Story Archive

Precious

Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire

Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009

Poor black teens. Neglect. AIDS. Rape. Down syndrome. Give this film an Oscar already!

Making the commonplace seem fresh

"An Education" is saved by a star-making performance

Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009

David has a wee secret, and if you can't figure it out, you badly need an education of your own.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2009

The story of an elite unit of soldiers armed with psychic powers was plenty nutty on its own—playing it for broad laughs in "The Men Who Stared at Goats" only renders it surprisingly toothless.

The Cove

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009

If you’re looking to be entertained, forget The Cove.

Amelia

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009

Amelia Earhart was a woman in a male-dominated field, and Amelia beats that fact into the ground until it coughs up blood.

The Stepfather

Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009

The 1987’s low-budget sleeper The Stepfather has long been championed as an uncommonly intelligent thriller, though it’d really be more accurate to call it primo schlock.

Where the emo things are

Spike Jonze turns a children’s classic into a twee indie-rock lyric

Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009

Spike Jonze turns a children’s classic into a twee indie-rock lyric.

Bright Star

From the director of The Piano comes the story of 19th-century poet John Keats and the love of his life

Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009

Here’s the deal: Either you’re the kind of person who’s going to get excited by a movie about the chaste romance between 19th-century poet John Keats and the love of his life, Fanny Brawne, or you’re not. If you are, keep reading.

Love, Michael Moore-style

More sarcastic muckraking from the liberal prankster

Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009

If there are two people I never want to see in a motion picture again, they are Michael Moore and some poor, low-paid security guard who is just trying to do his/her goddamn job.

Groovy nonsense

Steven Soderbergh transforms corporate malfeasance into zany comedy with The Informant!

Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009

Steven Soderbergh transforms corporate malfeasance into zany comedy with The Informant!

Homicide

Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009

Long unavailable on home video, David Mamet’s 1991 film Homicide remains the most weirdly personal work he’s written directly for the screen, and still ranks among his finest.

Julia

Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009

Easily one of the best films to be released this year—albeit not in Las Vegas—Julia finds perpetually cool Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton) taking a flamethrower to her image.

Ang Lee’s lamest movie ever

Take a pass on Taking Woodstock

Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009

It was inevitable, I suppose, that Ang Lee would eventually get around to the historical docudrama—or, as I’ve recently dubbed that generally useless collection of bullet-point factoids, the Wiki-movie. Enter Taking Woodstock.

Disappointing Basterds

Tarantino’s war movie is engaging but ordinary

Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009

While Tarantino spent the better part of a decade describing this project as his version of The Dirty Dozen or The Guns of Navarone—a badass, action-heavy, dudes-on-a-mission war flick - he’s actually made ... well, a Tarantino movie.

A Tarantino fave: The 5 Deadly Venom

Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009

Chang Cheh’s The 5 Deadly Venoms (1978) boasted a concept so memorable that it was even parodied in the animated Kung Fu Panda.

Blunt but effective allegory, with aliens

District 9 is a bracing genre effort

Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009

Structured as a fake documentary, a city-sized spacecraft mysteriously stalled 20 years ago Its starving, frightened occupants, who resemble huge bipedal prawns, were evacuated by humanity and given what was meant to be temporary shelter in a hastily constructed shantytown.

Intimate yet grandiose

Francis Ford Coppola capitalizes on his freedom to indulge himself with Tetro

Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009

Francis Ford Coppola capitalizes on his freedom to indulge himself with Tetro

DVD Spotlight: Repulsion

Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009

Few films have depicted the descent into madness with as much sheer nightmarish brio as Roman Polanski’s 1965 Repulsion.

Staring into the void

Adam Sandler is the hollow center of the unsatisfying Funny People

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Funny People finds longtime pal Judd Apatow teasing us with the notion of the “real” Adam Sandler. It’s a commendably dark portrait in many ways, but even in the guise of an unregenerate asshole, Sandler gives the camera absolutely nothing. He’s a contemptuous void.

Hurt’s so good ... until it isn’t

Locker opens as a war film for the ages but can’t sustain its excellence

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Ever since last year’s Venice Film Festival, where Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker had its world premiere, many critics have proclaimed it to be the first genuinely great movie about the war in Iraq.

O’Horten

Thursday, July 16, 2009

One of the most reliable crowd-pleasers, in multiplexes and arthouses alike, is the tale of the long-suffering conformist who finally cuts loose and embarks upon a series of whimsical adventures.

Oddly uncomfortable

Sacha Baron Cohen’s Brüno is funny but disconcerting

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Before the first reel is over, Brüno assaults viewers—and given the country’s collective sensibility, “assault” is really the only possible word—with a Benny Hill-style cavalcade of extreme gay sex acts.

Adoration

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Tom Egoyan may be the only filmmaker in the world who would go to the trouble of inventing fictional technology for a movie that couldn’t even remotely be considered science fiction.

Easy Virtue

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Jessica Biel plays Larita, an American race-car driver and divorcée who’s just married into a highly starched English family and must do brittle battle with her new mother-in-law and other snooty relations.

Rudo y Cursi

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Y Tu Mamá También's power duo of Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna are back together, this time under the direction of Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón's brother, Carlos.

Not trashy enough

Angels & Demons is too pompous and nerdy to be entertaining

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Trashy airport novels frequently make better movies than do works of serious literature, oddly enough. So you’d think that Dan Brown’s atrociously written—and yet compulsively readable—tales would make hugely entertaining Hollywood fluff. Bzzt.

Swing and a miss

Sugar is well-intentioned but a bit of a bore

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Sugar is well-intentioned but a bit of a bore.

Duller than fiction

Fact-based The Soloist lacks power, urgency

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Movies based on true stories generally like to trumpet their real-world bona fides right at the outset, so that we’ll be properly amazed as the remarkable events unfold.

Gomorrah

Thursday, April 16, 2009

From goofy teenage Tony Montana wannabes firing automatic weapons in their underwear, to the murderous muscle necessary to fashion a red carpet gown, nothing is overlooked or sensationalized in Gomorrah.

More sad than funny

Observe and Report is unforgettably bizarre

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Hollywood comedies don’t generally require keystones, but Observe and Report—a film so stubborn and bizarre that it might more accurately be termed an anti-comedy—goes the extra mile.

Adventureland

Thursday, April 2, 2009

No doubt the title is intended ironically, but still—pretty much the last word you’d ever use to describe Adventureland would be “adventurous.”

The Class

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Director Cantet observes the teacher-student dynamic with such probing patience that you can’t help but get emotionally involved in the struggle.

From a distance

Che is a dispassionate story of a passionate man

Thursday, March 19, 2009

As movies with no compelling reason to exist go, Che is really quite good.

Knowing

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Schoolkids are asked to draw their visions of the future; their efforts are then sealed into a time capsule to be opened 50 years hence.

Two Lovers

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Suicidally depressed after a broken engagement, Leonard Kraditor (Phoenix) finds himself torn between the titular beauties, feelin’ like a fool.

A rotten combo

Waltz With Bashir unsuccessfully combines animation and documentary

Thursday, Feb. 26, 2009

Waltz With Bashir has accomplished a remarkable film-ghetto hat trick, being simultaneously one of last year’s most acclaimed foreign films, one of its most celebrated documentaries and one of its most notable animated features.

Fired Up

Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009

Loud, aggressive, desperately ribald and pathetically unfunny, Fired Up lives down to every expectation you might have for a film produced under the aegis of Maxim magazine.

Don’t bank on it

Thrillers don’t get much duller than The International

Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009

Action thrillers are inherently preposterous, of course, but there’s a limit to what we’ll swallow.

He’s Just Not That Into You

Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009

A bitchy, tough-love self-help tome, He’s Just Not That Into You offers advice so blatantly obvious that the entire book can be condensed into a single sentence: If you have any doubt whatsoever about whether a guy really likes you, he doesn’t.

Stupid yet watchable

Taken is an exciting but troubling thriller

Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009

Arriving on U.S. screens nearly a full year after it opened in Europe, Taken, the latest hyperviolent potboiler produced and co-written by slick action ace Luc Besson (the Transporter series), feels even more retrograde and anachronistic than that delay might suggest.

Inkheart

Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009

Like most fantasy-adventure stories, Inkheart, adapted from German author Cornelia Funke’s popular series of children’s books, strives to conjure up a long-forgotten world.

Not exactly "Revolutionary"

Familiar sentiments are well represented in Revolutionary Road

Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009

Revolutionary Road opens with two scenes so beautifully judged—so perfect a précis of a marriage in crisis—that they just about render the rest of the film redundant.

Veering off-course

Clint Eastwood descends into self-parody in Gran Torino

Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009

Early in Gran Torino, playing what he’s said may well be his final role, Clint Eastwood growls. I mean that quite literally.

A low-stakes showdown

Frost/Nixon is insubstantial but engaging

Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008

Frost/Nixon is just an entertaining clash of two oversized egos, and that’s fine by me. Just so long as 30 years from now we aren’t obliged to endure the distaff sequel: Couric/Palin.

2008 in movies: A critical dialogue between Mike D'Angelo and Josh Bell

Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008

Two Weekly critics discuss the year in films.

The Spirit

Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008

At one point, for no good reason, Mendes’ sultry jewel thief photocopies her own ass. That’s this movie in a nutshell.

Doubt

Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008

Once upon a time, a movie set amongst priests and nuns and portentously titled Doubt might have concerned a crisis of faith. These days, however, another cause for uncertainty springs immediately to mind.

It’s not you, it’s us

Slumdog Millionaire may work for most, but not for us

Thursday, Dec. 18, 2008

Slumdog Millionaire arrives in local theaters riding a veritable tsunami of audience goodwill, to say nothing of its status as the current frontrunner for Best Picture at next year’s Oscars. People genuinely seem to love it. All I can do, really, is try my best to explain why I did not.

Moving forward but standing still

The Day the Earth Stood Still remake has updated politics, similar hokiness

Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008

The Day the Earth Stood Still, which in 1951 spoke to the nation’s anxiety about the terrible power of nuclear fission, has now gone green.

Milquetoast Milk

Gay-activist biopic follows time-worn formula

Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008

Milk, directed by Gus Van Sant, sticks fast to moldy biopic convention and features Academy Award-winner Sean Penn as doomed San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to win elected office.