Screen
Poised for monster success
Demons of mediocrity, be gone! Here we have a shrewd sequel a touch better than the original...
Circular logic
Writer/director Rian Johnson is fantastic at making pretty good movies. 2005’s Brick was a slyly conceived yarn that took 1940s private dick dialogue and plot and affixed them to a modern high-school setting, with middling effect. 2008’s The Brothers Bloom was a ...
From artist to activist
When Chinese government officials unexpectedly detained controversial artist Ai Weiwei — keeping him for 81 days in an undisclosed location — it ignited a firestorm of protests across the world that reinforced Ai’s calls for democracy in China...
Rom-com yawn
The business plan behind CBS Films is simple: midsize projects with good-size headliners, such as Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser of the inaugural CBS Films effort Extraordinary Measures, or Jennifer Lopez, who co-stars with Aussie hunk Alex O’Loughlin in the ...
A solid but soulless adaptation
Sleek and, until a stupidly violent climax, very entertaining, Unknown is the opposite of Memento. It’s about a man who knows who he is but everybody around him has forgotten, or thinks he’s delusional, or lying...
Fun with boxing
Six years ago, Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby showed up late in the release calendar and walloped enough fans of boxing melodrama cliches to send it straight to the Academy Awards. Now comes The Fighter, an off-center but exceptional boxing film that I prefer ...
