The Travers Take

At the Movies With Peter Travers: "Precious," "The Men Who Stare at Goats" and "Disney's A Christmas Carol"

November 5, 2009 2:49 PM

There's one can't-miss film hitting theaters this weekend, and Rolling Stone's Peter Travers can't stop gushing about Precious in this week's At the Movies. Film-festival darling Precious is a near perfect film, with only its clunky subtitle Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire among its flaws. If you can look past that, you'll find a moving film that "lifts you up in ways you don't see coming," Travers said in his three-and-a-half star review. The film is about a 353-pound, HIV-infected, illiterate 16-year-old girl named Precious who cares for her two babies (both fathered by her dad) and lives with her abusive mother.

It sounds harrowing, but Travers insists the film is hopeful, and all but guaranteed Oscar nods for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Mo'Nique's portrayal of the evil mother. The film also boasts two "amazing" performances by a pair of musicians: Mariah Carey completely makes up for Glitter by playing a social worker and Lenny Kravitz plays Nurse John, both of whom come to Precious' aid. Director Lee Daniels started a production company just to take risks and make movies like this, and with Precious, Travers says Daniels has hit the jackpot.

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Off the Cuff With Peter Travers: Jane Lynch

November 3, 2009 6:47 PM

Jane Lynch — a.k.a. acid-tongued Sue Sylvester from Glee and your favorite part of Best in Show, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and dozens more films — puts Peter Travers in his place in the new episode of Off the Cuff. Find out what originally drew her to the role (a few lines in the script about Penthouse and horse estrogen), her first-ever big-screen role, Taxi Killer ("the freakiest thing I ever did in my life") and her most humiliating TV commercial ("I am every woman who has ever suffered from reflux"). Plus, watch her sing the Guatemalan love song from Virgin and come up with a new theme song for Travers' show.


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Michael Jackson's "This Is It" Conquers the Global Box Office/Here at Home, Not So Much. Explain.

November 2, 2009 10:36 AM

Taking in a huge $101 million on its worldwide opening, Michael Jackson's This Is It — a concert film drawn exclusively from rehearsal footage — has now extended its intended two-week run in theaters through Thanksgiving. Maybe now the American audience won't drag its ass. The $21.3 million domestic total for the weekend was enough to hit No. 1 and send the hot-hot-hot Paranormal Activity to second place, with $16.5 million, even on Halloween. But, please, America, your middling interest in This Is It almost had the late King of Pop eating the dust of the OMFG dreadful Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds 3-D Concert Tour.

Read Peter Travers' review of This Is It

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At the Movies With Peter Travers: "This Is It"

October 29, 2009 2:30 PM

When Sony announced plans to turn hundreds of hours of rehearsal footage from Michael Jackson's This Is It concerts into a concert film, Peter Travers was concerned that the limited amount editing time would hurt the final product. However, "I'm kind of shocked at how good this movie is," Travers says in his video review of This Is It.

Read Peter Travers' review of This Is It.

Like the King of Pop himself, This Is It is flawed, spending too much time interviewing Jackson's backup singers and dancers and not enough time showing the entirety of some of the This Is It performances. However, when the film clicks, it provides an incredibly intimate look at one of the greatest performers the world has ever seen, especially in scenes like the one featuring Thriller's "Human Nature." Jackson appears frail in the footage, but once he starts dancing, you're reminded why he was the King of Pop.

For more on This Is It, read Rolling Stone's opening night report on the film. And visit our Essential Michael Jackson Coverage.


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Off The Cuff With Peter Travers: Ted Danson

October 29, 2009 12:38 PM

Can Ted Danson recall Norm from Cheers' real first name? Is he willing to sing the show's famous theme right here in the Rolling Stone office? Peter Travers grills the star of Damages, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Bored to Death about everything from smoking fake weed (which "works just as well," Danson says) to his relationship with Woody Harrelson in the latest episode of Off the Cuff.


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Even Though "Saw VI" Got Mutilated at the Box Office by "Paranormal Activity," What's Your Fave Saw Trap?

October 26, 2009 10:59 AM

Even the vengeful Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) couldn't see this trap coming. Every sequel to the Saw franchise that began in 2004 has opened north of $30 million. Not this time, horror fans. Saw VI had to settle for a puny half that much, debuting in its traditional pre-Halloween spot. WTF? It wasn't the movie's fault. Saw VI, taking a satirically serrated edge to, of all things, HMOs, is actually better than the last two entries in the series. And it has decent reviews to prove it.

Watch Saw VI star Tobin Bell on Off the Cuff With Peter Travers

What Jigsaw didn't count on was Paranormal Activity, launched by Paramount with a viral promo campaign that really caught fire. This weekend Paranormal grabbed a massive $22 million from fewer than 2,000 screens. Saw VI, on over 3,000 screens, took in only $14.8 million, making it the box-office shame of the series. My advice to Jigsaw in Saw VII? Go back in time and trap that yuppie paranormal couple in their bedroom with the nastiest torture trap you can devise.

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At the Movies With Peter Travers: "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant," "Amelia" and "Antichrist"

October 22, 2009 3:33 PM

With one weekend to go until Halloween, the cinematic fare entering movie theaters this Friday is frighteningly bad, and Rolling Stone's Peter Travers tells you what to avoid like the plague this weekend At the Movies. Since we're closing in on October 31st, we'll kick it off this week with Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, the movie adaptation of the 12-part British novel. Despite the presence of the always-great John C. Reilly, this movie is "lame." A boy goes to a freak show, gets bitten by a vampire and zaniness ensues. Between True Blood and Twilight, vampires are hot right now, but this movie is pure Scum Bucket. Since the movie only used the first three books of the series for this film, Vampire's Assistant ends with a cliffhanger, but after this debacle of a film it's unlikely those sequels will ever be made.

Next is a film that was forecasted to be a major Oscar player, Amelia, starring two-time winner Hilary Swank as the aviatrix Amelia Earhart.

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Off the Cuff With Peter Travers: Tobin Bell

October 22, 2009 10:16 AM

Do you want to play a game, Peter Travers? Our movie critic falls under the influence of Saw star Tobin Bell in the latest Off the Cuff, where the pair spar over the fate of Jigsaw, Bell's most bone-chilling Saw scenes ("I think that the surgery on my brain in Saw III was amazingly done — extremely credible"), the scariest scenes he's ever seen (from The Wizard of Oz to Dancing With the Stars) and criticism of "torture-porn" films.


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Shocker: The Box-Office Goes "Wild" Over a Kid Movie That Freaks Some Kids Out. Is It the Best of the Breed?

October 19, 2009 4:30 PM

Pinch me. I must be hallucinating. A truly great movie, the Spike Jonze film of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, hit the box-office No. One spot, a space usually reserved for the wretched likes of Couples Retreat or the violently stupid Law Abiding Citizen, which had to settle for runner-up status. How did quality win out?

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At the Movies With Peter Travers: “Where the Wild Things Are" and "Law Abiding Citizen"

October 15, 2009 9:33 AM

There's only one film you need to catch this weekend At the Movies, and it's the cinematic adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. The film is a must-see for everyone of every age, and Rolling Stone's movie critic Peter Travers awarded it four stars in the new issue of RS.

It takes a director like Spike Jonze, who Travers calls "one of the most imaginative filmmakers out there," to create such an incredible tale out of a children's story that only had 10 sentences. All the performances are incredible, from newcomer Max Records — "Best performance by a child this century," says Travers — to the voice work from James Gandolfini and Lauren Ambrose. And no, the PG film is not "too scary" for younger audiences. "This is a movie for everybody, and Spike Jonze has done something special," Travers says of this visual and emotional tour de force.

Now it's time for Travers to tell us Where the Scum Bucket Films Are.

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