Though designer Tom Ford’s greasy ubiquity and controversial Vanity Fair cover has earned him a few critical knocks, his adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s novel hums with grace notes. Set in 1962 California, we spend a day with suicidal yet stolid English professor George Falconer—Colin Firth’s nuanced performance risks making him as much an icon to […]
movie review
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Decade in review: Palermo on Palermo
Partly, I loved having the excuse. I didn’t have to worry about my dignity when walking into Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. “You’re actually going to see The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas?” a friend would ask. “Yeah,” I’d say. “It’s my job.” Sometimes it is a job. Sometimes going to see Saw V is a day […]
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Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus a visual treat
Dr. Parnassus has one of the most herky-jerky plots of recent memory. I’ll give you the skeleton—an anachronistic travelling stage-show (led by Christopher Plummer’s Parnassus) is joined by a mysterious outsider (Heath Ledger)—and then give you some of the elements that form the meat of the film: dreamworlds (a visual trip befitting director Terry Gilliam), […]
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Ritchie keeps Sherlock Holmes elementary
The lure of a different kind of blockbuster, with intellectual gameplay and fast wit, is discarded by Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. It fits the exact mould of a prefab blockbuster. Ritchie portrays Victorian London with a grey and brown emphasis on dust and dirt. But it’s only set dressing. The movie’s too frantic in its […]
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Nine is not Italian
Despite its nauseating refrain of “Be Italian,” there’s not an Italian actor among the main cast of Nine. Rob Marshall’s song-and-dance take on Fellini’s 8½ is a let’s-play-dressup front–a fictitious reduction of another director’s autobiographical classic. Marshall’s numbers have neither flash nor scope. They enter the movie as psychological explorations of Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis), […]
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Did you hear about the Morgans?
Estranged couple Meryl and Paul Morgan (Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant) witness a murder and are forced to flee their chic New York lives into the protection of Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen, the sheriffs of slow-pokey Ray, Wyoming. Diabolically inert and tonally clunky, but obviously going for a ra-ta-tat romantic comedy throwback, what […]
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Blunt and Friend play cute royal introverts in Young Victoria
If you are like me, you know most of your history of British monarchs from the films based on their lives. The Young Victoria is set just prior to Mrs. Brown, and just after The Madness of King George and copies both films’ playful marvel at their subjects exalted lives. The wide swath of Victoria’s […]
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Avatar falls flat without third dimension
James Cameron’s Avatar finally drops amid excitement about his epic visuals and budget and disappointment in the paper-thin plot for which they serve. Sam Worthington, via a 9-foot-tall blue Avatar, infiltrates the Na’vi tribe in order to coerce them off of the land above a rich energy mineral deposit and eventually goes native when human […]
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Invictus stirs the soul
The mere premise of Invictus stirs the soul: Confronted with a still hostile and divided population, South African president Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) encouraged and gently manipulated the underdog national rugby team (lead by Matt Damon as captain) from a predominantly white-South African passion to a unifying national cause. Director Clint Eastwood studiously avoids cues […]
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Brothers reaches for emotional truths
The baseless nihilism of so many Hollywood Oscar films gets shown up by Brothers. To the embarrassment of some, director Jim Sheridan wears his heart on his sleeve, but his melodrama is attentive to emotional truth—attaining real intensity and recognition. Out of his depth with the 50 Cent showcase Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, Sheridan […]
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Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, the abysmal sequel to the already lugubrious Night at the Museum, received some interesting competition in gross-out comedy Dance Flick last weekend. While the films play to different portions of the under-30 market—Museum to the kiddies, Dance Flick to the teens—the films can be compared in their […]