Screen
reel to reel | Week of May 10, 2012
ALL ABOUT ACTRESSES A woman director wants to make a documentary about actresses, all actresses: the popular ones, the unknown, the intellectuals, the comics and the forgotten ...Filming absolutely everything, with or without their permission, the director will be...
Nolan delivers again
Inception is one of the most complicated stories I’ve ever seen on the big screen, but if you can figure out what’s going on, it’s an amazing movie filled with mind-boggling visuals and an intriguing exploration of the subconscious. It might also be the best movie ...
Better than nothing
Set in Manhattan, The Switch is all over the place. But around the halfway point it starts getting interesting and the people who put it together are at least working in a realm of reasonable intelligence and wit and respect for the audience. I wish it were great, ...
Arrested development
It´s not easy being mean, as Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody’s latest project, Young Adult — directed by her Juno collaborator, Jason Reitman — goes about illustrating with an intriguing, unsettled blend of pity and pitilessness...
Temporarily funny
I like Jay Baruchel. He’s the 21st-century Don Knotts, and even in a forgettable film like She’s Out of My League — its title alone secures it a place in film history alongside She’s All That and She’s Out of Control — Baruchel’s adenoidal, sidewinding line ...
Up and Downey
Although traditionally necessary for filmmaking, the original Iron Man was rumored not to have had much of a real script, just an outline of key moments and the note “fill in gaps with Robert Downey Jr.’s swag.” Much to the chagrin of the Writers Guild of America, it...
Freebie fraught with failure
Up until their remake of The Heartbreak Kid, two of the unfunniest hours ever, Peter and Bobby Farrelly could be counted on to provide a few fine rude laughs even when their films wobbled...
Mama, have mercy
Horror films are often peppered with moments in which you wish your protagonists were just a little more bright or had planned things out a little better — “Don’t go into that basement” and “Don’t open that door.” Even the beloved Shining leaves moments of, “Damn it...
Damon’s above the corn
Pap, but easygoing pap with a cast you can live with for a couple of hours, We Bought a Zoo is co-writer and director Cameron Crowe’s adaptation of a memoir by Benjamin Mee entitled We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the...
Control-Z Cruise
Every time Tom Cruise, the greatest modern matinee idol, makes a new movie, everybody rushes to fuse artist and art and spews out some variation of “I just don’t like him anymore.” America’s collective moral stance seems to be that we should never forget that someone...
















