Screen
Not genius, but still good
The most startling shot in Paranormal Activity 3 is something even the film’s determined unbelievers would concede to be damnably effective...
You’ll need a Haneke
Oh, hell no. Why you gotta do us like that, writer/director Michael Haneke? Is life not already emotionally dense enough that you have to go and drop Amour on us just to remind us how finite and precious this human experience is? This is the sort of film you don’t ...
R2D2 meets the AARP
First things first: although she’s only eight years younger than he is, nobody will accept that Susan Sarandon would want to kiss Frank Langella on his mouth parts. That premise requires a bigger suspension of disbelief than the rest of Robot & Frank, which presumes ...
Magnifying injustice
A certain segment of the population has always believed Nixon’s War on Drugs to be a tragic waste of time, money and human life. A damning statistic, familiar to those with even a minor interest in the drug boondoggle, comes early in The House I Live In: “Since 1971...
A thriller for grandma
The Tourist is a facsimile of a masquerade of a gloss on Charade, and on all the lesser cinematic charades that followed in the wake of director Stanley Donen’s 1963 picture. While it’s fairly easy to take in its retro way — it certainly takes it easy on the audience...
Conned by a film
The brilliantly untrustworthy documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop reminds us that a film can start out in one direction and then change course so radically, it becomes an act of provocation unto itself. It’s billed as the first feature by the shadowy British ...
