The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Two-Disc Special Edition (Paramount) Button remains scattershot on second viewing, hampered by David Fincher’s inability to believe in sentiment as much as technical wizardry. But the disc’s three-hour making-of documentary sets a new quality standard for behind-the-scenes extras. DVD —MP Dollhouse: Season One (20th Century Fox) The never-aired, first-season […]
Mark Palermo
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Twilight: New Moon’s light flickers
The Twilight Saga: New Moon may satisfy the faithful, yet director Chris Weitz’s take on the vamp-lit phenomenon doesn’t work Stephanie Meyer’s text into driven screen fiction. It becomes increasingly evident here that 18-year-old Bella (Kristen Stewart) is unusually passive as a film hero. She’s the type of protagonist more common to pop songs: Bella […]
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Ninja Assassin needs a high kick
The main reason to like the good guys more than the bad guys in Ninja Assassin is that they’re labelled that way. It probably won’t stand up in court, but Raizo (pop superstar Rain) falls in the good side because he once fell in love. The fight scenes unleash disposable villain after disposable villain with […]
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Fantastic Mr. Fox is, well, fantastic
Fantastic Mr. Fox presents a world and characters in miniature, and that minute detail makes it an abstract joy on the big screen. Wes Anderson’s take on Roald Dahl’s children’s classic isn’t as polished as the stop-motion in Corpse Bride or Coraline. Its distinctly jittery retro-style of furry dolls brought to life is the perfect […]
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Blind Sided by the bourgeois
Despairingly ignorant, The Blind Side never gets off its bourgeois perch. Based on the teen life of Baltimore Ravens lineman Michael Tuohy (Quinton Aron), the colossal black youth is rescued from poverty when concerned white mom Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) allows him to live with her family. The Blind Side‘s take on race relations […]
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Don’t be scared by 2012
Director Roland Emmerich declares his superiority to Italian Renaissance artists in 2012, first by threatening the Mona Lisa, then by reveling in the destruction of the Sistine Chapel. 2012 (AKA Revenge of the Earth) has been under some scrutiny for exploiting 9/11 imagery. But its failure isn’t that noble: Emmerich hasn’t the skill to invoke […]
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Don’t be taken by The Fourth Kind
To convince everyone that The Fourth Kind is more than a movie (it’s the truth, or something), actress Milla Jovovich introduces herself by her real name, stating that she’ll be using her thespian arts to honour alien-abductee Abbey Tyler. Separating performers from their subjects is a relevant idea in an era where some viewers are […]
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Some assembly required for The Box
Richard Kelly has original sin on his mind in The Box. An expansion of a Richard Matheson story, and subsequent Twilight Zone episode, this science fiction tale deals with absolutes of greed and compromise. A couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) is delivered a box containing a machine. As they’re told by the disfigured man […]
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Singing A Christmas Carol’s empty praises
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is so familiarly engrained that another telling must bring something new to the table. The 3D motion-capture version runs through the motions, except for one detail: It’s visually beautiful. Even working in animation (this follows The Polar Express and Beowulf), director Robert Zemeckis’ technical direction brings a sophistication to classic storytelling […]
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Next Day Air
It can’t figure out how to begin or end, but for the 80 or so minutes in between, Next Day Air is an underestimated genre surprise. The feature debut of hip-hop video director Benny Boom is smarter and funnier about human nature than The Pineapple Express, the Friday sequels and most Guy Ritchie crime sagas […]
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is this it for Michael Jackson?
A prelude to “Smooth Criminal” has Michael Jackson edited alongside Rita Hayworth and Humphrey Bogart in clips from Gilda and In a Lonely Place. Coming from anyone else, this would be unwarranted ego-tripping. But no other pop music artist (not Elvis, not Madonna, not The Beatles) ever made as powerful an impression on film images […]
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Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man mundane
The common Coen brothers scenario of good peoples’ lives ruined by bad choices is flipped in A Serious Man. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a good person whose trauma is that he makes no new choices. The metaphor is made plain: As a math professor, Larry insists that equations must provide certainty. A Simple Man […]
