movie reviews
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 »
Oz the Great and Powerful
James Franco, Michelle Williams, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Quick: who played the title role in 1939's The Wizard of Oz? The answer is Frank Morgan, who stepped in when W.C. Fields couldn't make a deal. I bring this up because James Franco, who plays a younger version of the wizard in the overscaled, underwhelming prequel, Oz the Great and Powerful, is also standing in a shadow. Robert Downey Jr. was the original choice. Would Downey have been a better pick for the charismatic con artist than the more introspective Franco? You be the judge. ... | More »
Emperor
Tommy Lee Jones
Directed by: Peter Webber
Nobody does hardass better than Tommy Lee Jones. Nobody. So casting Jones as Douglas MacArthur, the general assigned to help rebuild Japan after World War II and bring Emperor Hirohito (Takata rô Kataoka) to trial for war crimes, is just plain inspired. But then director Peter Webber (Girl With a Pearl Earring), working from a stiff of a script by Vera Blasi and David Klass, goes and ruins it by focusing attention on the wrong guy. By that I mean Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox), the genera... | More »
Beyond the Hills
Cosmina Stratan
Directed by: Cristian Mungiu
Young nuns cooped up in a monastery. Lustful yearnings. The hint of demonic possession. What seems like the makings of a tawdry horror show becomes a subtle and moving exploration into the sacred and profane. The miracle worker here is Christian Mungiu, the Romanian writer-director who helped put his country’s cinema on the map with 2007’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a firebomb about illegal abortion. Beyond the Hills plays it closer inside, timed to the beat of bruised hearts. ... | More »
Jack the Giant Slayer
Ewan McGregor, Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson
Directed by: Bryan Singer
Sounds tasty. Why not have Jack climb a beanstalk to find a band of ravenous giants ready to bite his dumb head off? And who better than director Bryan Singer (X-Men, X2) to team with his cheeky Usual Suspects screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie and turn a bedtime story into a dark fantasy meant for nightmares? It could have happened. But it so doesn't. Singer's Jack the Giant Slayer, set for release last summer but lying dormant till now, is no sleeping beauty. It's a bloodles... | More »
Stoker
Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, Mia Wasikowska
Directed by: Park Chan-wook
If you haven't turned on to the cinematic fever dreams of South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook – I'm obsessed with Oldboy, Thirst and Joint Security Area – Stoker makes a great gateway drug. It's Park's first film in English. But it hasn't slowed him down. Stoker is Park's darkly funny, deliciously depraved riff on Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, in which a young girl bonds with her serial-killer uncle. The deft script, by actor Wentworth Miller ... | More »
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