Screen
Slop disguised as fun
In its own sweetly bombastic way, the 2008 remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth did the job, the job being a 21st-century 3-D bash starring Brendan Fraser — an actor who gives his all to the green screen, every time — and loosely based on the 19th-century ...
The fascination of film
In a world where the Adam Sandler fiasco Jack and Jill makes $68 million at the box office, it’s easy to forget that movies are pretty much magic...
Too disappointing
As if by deliberate and vaguely sadistic design, Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil leeches the fun clean out of the first Hoodwinked (2005). Six years between films is a long time, and here, when Kirk the Woodsman shows up and someone says something like “Hey! It’s Kirk ...
Antebellum antiheroism
Oh, Quentin Tarantino, you’ve really done it this time, haven’t you? Nobody really cared when you fantasized that Hitler didn’t end his reign of terror with one last murder (his own), placing therapeutic cinematic release into the hands of machine-gun toting Jews ...
reel to reel | Week of July 21, 2011
Bad Teacher Cameron Diaz gets in touch with her bad self as the world’s worst teacher, an alcoholic, drugusing party animal who tries to seduce a wealthy new substitute (Justin Timberlake). Rated R. At Century, Flatiron and Twin Peaks — Rene Rodriguez Beginners ...
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...
Rediscovered country
It opens like any other western: Sepia soaked still photographs of settlers in wagons traversing a wild frontier while title cards credit the actors, the...
Storytelling for a cause
Herschel Goldberg wants you to see Liyana.
“The core message is something that everybody needs to see,” Goldberg says. “Or feel. It’s more about the...
Stuck in the middle with you
Professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) loves history. Not just any old history but antiquity: Greeks, Romans, Sumerians — you name ’em, Paul knows all...
Blue screens of death
Every few years, somebody gets a weird bug up their ass to make a movie that doesn’t look like a movie, from Hardcore Henry,...
