Who are the bad guys here? Is it the “prawns” from outer space? The Nigerian hoodlums? The profit-driven corporate chieftains at MNU? Or the trigger-happy South African Defense Force? We know the good guy is the pencil-pusher Wikus van der Merve, and what a good guy! Meak, somewhat wimpy, none too bright, and yet he […]
This is a one-trick movie, and once you see that it is a dirty trick being played on the viewer, the modest respect I had for the Hawaiian scenery and Steve Zahn’s character flew out the window. There are “red snappers” – I mean, herrings – galore, but the switcheroo is not of that ilk. […]
Glad I saw this with my wife because, whereas I saw Summer as gorgeous perfection, too good for any guy in this movie, my wife saw Summer as vapid, emotionally withholding, not worthy of Tom, whom I saw as a feckless twerp. Of course, we were both right, which is a testament to the fine […]
This was an indelicate subject made with surprising delicacy, thanks especially to a compellingly rational lead talking-head, Eric Schlosser. The glaring weakness was the lack of a two-sided argument: none of the big food companies that were vilified – Monsanto, Perdue, Tyson, etc. – were willing to be interviewed, which left me to wonder if […]
Hysterically funny, at least the half I was able to catch. It was paced like a sitcom, and the performances were uniformly over-the-top, but the whole fit seamlessly together, like fingers in a glove. An especially deft and novel leitmotif was the role of 20-somethings, pulling and being hit by levers in the power corridors […]
What an expensively handsome emotional zero! A film eulogizing a murdering bank robber was probably misconceived to begin with, but then to direct both John Dillinger and G-man Melvin Purvis as one-dimensional ensured that our sympathies would not be engaged. The love interest, played by Marion Cotillard, set off no sparks, either. The only character […]
I had never heard of the “naïve” artist Seraphine de Senlis, but discovering at movie’s end that she was a real person explained in large part why this film was so dramatically inert. To take but one example, Wilhelm Uhde had to flee Senlis at the outset of World War I because that actually happened, […]
Powerful and suspenseful, beautifully directed and acted. Together with Dexter Filkins’ amazing The Forever War, which I’m currently reading, this gives a picture of the war in Iraq that makes you wonder, over and over, what are we doing there? Who is the enemy we are fighting? It could be anyone – the man with […]
It’s funny how a movie that starts with such an extraordinarily mundane, realistic view of New York City, not to mention such a depressing view of the human condition, ends up in a total fantasy – everybody happy, everybody fulfilled, and everybody together on that most depressing night of all, New Year’s Eve. But that’s […]
A must for lovers of Art Nouveau – dec arts and fashion – optional for the rest, this apparent synthesis of two Belle Epoque novels by Collette defines “longueur” (languor?) in the person of the title character, played by sole-eyed Rupert Friend. Now, if Michelle Pfeiffer were French, or even sounded, like the estimable Kathy […]
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