Whether you are artsy or fartsy, you’ve heard the question: “What makes an artist?” Ever notice how these debates always come down to money? Who persists in that bohemian ideal of vibrant squalour; who is a sellout because they didn’t and who is a loser because they no longer live in poverty as a choice, […]
Hillary Titley
Posted inArts + Music
Don’t mind The Other Guys
NYC cops Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are the bumbling other guys to the regular cowboys in the bullpen, personified by Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson. Ferrell is a prissy poindexter and Wahlberg shot Derek Jeter in the thigh (an apparent no-no in NYC). Ferrell and director Adam McKay’s indulgent, risque fly-paper narrative approach […]
Posted inArts + Music
Winter’s Bones powerfully cathartic
A young woman, Ree (Jennifer Lawrence), takes care of her two younger siblings and an invalid mother in a tiny house on a rural clearing in the Ozarks. The town’s sheriff comes to the door to tell her that her meth-cook father has been released on bail and has put the family home up as […]
Posted inArts + Music
Step Up 3D all moves
The cloyingly sincere Pirate dance crew of NYC enters the World Jam dance-off against the evil Samurais in a last ditch effort to save their beloved, ramshackle dance studio. If you had to come up with a dance crew concept—evil or otherwise—what would it be? Mine would be the Grind-Haus, a collective dedicated to choreographing […]
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Dinner for Schmucks uses the wrong recipe
Bad movies are sometimes rendered diabolical in light of all the missed opportunities and bad choices contained within them. Dinner For Schmucks, where Paul Rudd invites atomic dork Steve Carell to the monthly office freak show/dinner party, is that kind of bad movie. Its sins: Rudd plays another of one of his interchangeable stressed-but-otherwise steady […]
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Charlie St. Cloud floats away
Charlie St. Cloud is the town golden boy and is the exact type of character you expect Zach Efron to play. A tragic car accident takes the life of Charlie’s beloved younger brother, so he defers his upcoming placement at Stanford University indefinitely to wallow in his remorse, meeting the ghost of said brother everyday […]
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Pass the Salt
Let’s be upfront and get Salt’s faults out of the way: There is a plain, egregious misuse of the incomparable Andre Braugher, and two major plot twists are easy to foresee. However, in other ways, Salt overcomes mediocrity and poor judgment. The titular protagonist was originally written for Tom Cruise and then re-written for uber-femme-fatale […]
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Ramona and Beezus: the good kind of cute
Based on the books by Beverly Cleary, imaginative, nine-year-old Ramona Quimby (Joey King) copes with being the class misfit and the family trouble-maker. This film is cute without being insipid. Ramona is an adorable moppet with a loving and interesting family (played by John Corbett and Bridget Moynahan as the dad and mom, and Selena […]
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The Kids Are All Right is more than alright
For gay or straight parents, Mark Ruffalo’s character Paul in The Kids Are All Right—tanned, coolly scruffy, possessing a college-is-a-waste-of-time attitude and riding a motorcycle—is your basic nightmare. Moms Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) have plenty to fret over when their children (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson) seek out their sperm donor father […]
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Predators lacks originality
Predators is perfectly serviceable, but not engaging enough to prevent the mind from wandering away from the plot and onto a moviegoer’s ongoing, large and vexing questions like, “Is originality now just a matter of making old properties fresh and feeling like new?” The director of this picture, Nimrod Antal, has a keen eye (a […]
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The Girl Who Played With Fire gets burned
The second film based on the late Stieg Larsson’s internationally successful thriller series makes the first film’s sensational, expansive unwieldy plot seem positively concise. Here, Lisbeth Salander’s (Noomi Rapace) vicious family history come to the fore and gets intertwined with the murder of a young journalist ready to break the story of sex-trafficking in Sweden. […]
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Close to Hefner
Documentary filmmaker Brigitte Berman relates a story about showing her film, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, Rebel, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City: “A woman stood up after the film and said, ‘A friend asked me what film I was going to see and I said a film about Hugh Hefner’ and […]
