Take a Marvel Norse god superhero, Shakespearean director Kenneth Branagh, and special effects up the wazoo and you get the epic battle-fest, Thor. After venturing to icy Yodenheim to fight blue-skinned, red-eyed giants, the jacked, blonde Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is banished from Asgard—his magical, gilded home in the sky—landing on Earth in a magnetic tornado, […]
Natalie Portman
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Your Highness “tepid and lazy”
There was reason to believe that director David Gordon Green and writer-actor Danny McBride, who collaborated to varying degrees on Pineapple Express and Eastbound and Down, could make some comedic hay with this quest-movie parody. Instead, they’ve produced a tepid and lazy film, wasting their own talents and those of a strong cast. McBride plays […]
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No Strings Attached keeps it light
Pleasant surprises abound in Ivan Reitman’s romcom about an aspiring TV writer (Ashton Kutcher) and a med student (Natalie Portman) who try to carry on a sexual relationship without getting their emotions involved. Portman, clearly enjoying a break from Serious Movies, shows real comic chops, while Kutcher’s lack of electricity comes across here as laid-back […]
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No rhythm for Black Swan
The plot of Darren Aronofosky’sBlack Swan is similar to that of his elegiac The Wrestler: talented athlete faces greatest challenge despite obstacles, namely self. Which is basically the plot of any Disney movie, and perhaps if Black Swan were animated, it might not come off so ludicrously. Natalie Portman is Nina, a prudish ballerina under […]