movie reviews
Trance
Rosario Dawson, James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel
Directed by: Danny Boyle
Danny Boyle's trippy, Inception-like thriller is a hypnotic head trip that demands you trust no one. I'm down with that. Boyle, an Oscar winner for Slumdog Millionaire and the twisted mister behind Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, 28 Days Later, 127 Hours and the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, is out to dazzle us with Trance. And, boy, does he ever! You're in for a mind-bending spin. The script, by Joe Ahearne and John Hodge, is a setup, a series of them. James McA... | More »
The Company You Keep
Robert Redford, Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie
Directed by: Robert Redford
Right-wingers have their panties in a bunch misreading Robert Redford's The Company You Keep as a celebration of the Weather Underground, who were 1960s radicals committed to the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. It's the corruption of Sixties idealism that sparks the interest of Redford as actor and director. In adapting Neil Gordon's novel, screenwriter Lem Dobbs tells us about extremists who went into hiding. When a present-day New York housewife, Sharon Solarz (Susa... | More »
The Place Beyond the Pines
Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes
Directed by: Derek Cianfrance
Director Derek Cianfrance shows ambition for days in The Place Beyond the Pines. One story links to another and then another and another, over decades. Hold on tight. It's a beast of a movie, an emotional roller coaster that threatens to go off the rails, and does. But Cianfrance, working from a scrappy script he wrote with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, takes you on a hell of a ride. Ryan Gosling, who teamed brilliantly with Cianfrance on Blue Valentine, is spectacular as Luke, a motorc... | More »
The Host
Saoirse Ronan, William Hurt, Diane Kruger
Directed by: Andrew Niccol
A human girl, possessed by something alien and undead, must choose between two cute boys. WTF! Is this another Twilight? Nope. But The Host is born from the mother of all things Twilight, Stephenie Meyer, which is the next best – or worst – thing, depending on your point of view. Meyer's 2008 bestseller has its moments; the movie has fewer, owing to director Andrew Niccol's bizarre decision to drag things out. Ever. So. Slowly. The MVP is 18-year-old Irish miracle worke... | More »
Room 237
Directed by: Rodney Ascher
Repeat looks at a favorite film are no big whoop. But the five fans of The Shining in Rodney Ascher's mesmerizing Room 237 are obsessed to near psychosis with Stanley Kubrick's 1980 thriller. ABC journalist Bill Blakemore, college professor Geoffrey Cocks, playwright Juli Kearns, author Jay Weidner and musician John Fell Ryan are heard but unseen. The visuals are all from the film, based on Stephen King's novel, with Jack Nicholson as a caretaker haunted by the Overlook Hotel, ... | More »
Admission
Tina Fey, Paul Rudd
Directed by: Paul Weitz
I'd see Tina Fey and Paul Rudd in anything, but this is pushing it. Admission is so slight that a breeze could flatten it. For ballast, director Paul Weitz (About a Boy) brings on a cast of overqualified pros. The always-welcome Fey plays Portia Nathan, a Princeton admissions officer dedicated to choosing only the best. No flaws get past her, though it takes her years to realize that Mark (Michael Sheen), the jerk prof she lives with, is a cheat. Then, on a tour of New England schools, ... | More »
The Sapphires
Chris O’Dowd
Directed by: Wayne Blair
You could call it an Aussie Dreamgirls. I'd call it a blast of joy and music that struts right into your heart. The truth at the core of this movie is that an Aboriginal female soul quartet had to push past racial discrimination at home to entertain troops in Vietnam in 1968. Writer Tony Briggs turned the story of his mother and her group into a 2004 stage smash. And now, with the help of screenwriter Keith Thompson, and Wayne Blair in a striking feature-directing debut, the play is a mo... | More »
Gimme the Loot
Tashiana Washington, Ty Hickson
Directed by: Adam Leon
Want a bracing alternative to the usual Hollywood swill? Try Gimme the Loot, a fresh, funky jolt of filmmaking joy. Made for peanuts on the streets of New York in less than a month, this exhilarating gift of a movie marks a stellar debut for writer-director Adam Leon, 31. Instead of the easy attitudinizing that is the default position for teen comedies, Gimme the Loot fills each frame with raw talent and exuberance. Plot? It's two hard days' nights in the lives of Malcolm (Ty Hicks... | More »
Spring Breakers
James Franco
Directed by: Harmony Korine
If you want to stop hating on James Franco for his 2011 Oscar-hosting debacle, the time is now. Spring Breakers, beach-party fluff done as an art film by the reliably bizarre Harmony Korine, is a return to form for Franco. As Alien, a gun-crazy Florida drug dealer with tats, beaded cornrows and a grill any rapper would envy, Franco is a bug-fuck blast. Too bad the movie itself is rarely as outrageous as he is. The promise of nudity and girl-on-girl action among Disney hotties Vanessa Hudgens... | More »
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
Steve Carell, Jim Carrey
Directed by: Don Scardino
It sounds like fun. Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi as cheese-whizzy Vegas magicians trying to fight off Jim Carrey and his new kind of wizard act, a Jackass-like exercise in self-abuse that’s an online sensation. Cool, right? Not right. Magicians have been pulling rabbits out of hats for ages. And yet, with all this talent, no one can make a decent script materialize. What screenwriters Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (Horrible Bosses) have foisted on the cast, including the g... | More »
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