Screen
Out with the old
There’s funny and then there’s funny, and A Good Old- Fashioned Orgy is neither. I suspect Contagion will be funnier...
reel to reel | Week of July 19, 2012
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Peter Parker gets a new look (and an origin story) in this Marvel remake of everyone’s favorite web slinger. Unlike Toby Maguire’s emo-esque rendition of the wall-crawler, actor Andrew Garfield’s portayal hopes to bring Spidey back to his ...
Casualties of war
What does it take to be a soldier on the Casualty Notification Team, the “Angels of Death Squadron,” traveling the United States and letting spouses and parents know that someone has died while in the Army? And at what cost personally...
Recyclists
This is not a good movie. It’s important to establish that early on so that you can understand how an appreciation of its moving parts doesn’t fully remove one central thesis: Premium Rush is crap. It may, however, be somewhat fun crap, depending on your tolerance ...
Smurfed up
The good news about the big-screen 3-D version of The Smurfs is that it’s not the insipid — and some say “socialist” — Smurfs you remember from 1980s TV...
Fantastic furry fun in ‘Mr. Fox’
In a world of children’s films increasingly characterized by technological accomplishment and sophisticated rendering in lieu of good old-fashioned storytelling, it was a breath of fresh air to enjoy the stop-motion Fantastic Mr. Fox...
Where you been, Laden?
That members of the U.S. Senate have spent more time discussing the fictional depiction of torture in Zero Dark Thirty than they spent discussing the actual torture the military was performing in the wake of 9/11 is yet more proof that “Congress” is the opposite of “...
Hammer time
At this point in the Marvel Comics-derived superhero cycle, audiences can be forgiven for feeling a tad worn out, both for reasons of quality and quantity. My rear end’s thor just thinking about how many more we have coming. Yet sometimes a product exceeds ...
Partly sunny
To steal from Mother Goose (don’t worry, she’s dead): When Cloud Atlas is good, it’s very, very good; when it’s bad, Hugo Weaving is doing a drag impression of Nurse Ratched. The ambition of writers/directors Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Twyker, working from David...
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...
Iron performance
On the surface, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher might not seem like a good subject for a biopic. She wasn’t flamboyant, there’s no romantic back-story, and she was more known for her steel will than her diplomacy. In these politically charged times, ...
