Screen
Why, Steve and Tina, why?
In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, Steve Carell recalls costar Tina Fey telling him: “I just want to go and do a movie and hang off the end of a car.” This, of course, is the problem with being associated with successful, classy, verbally driven ...
United in praise
At the end of the first Iron Man, when Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) popped up to mention “The Avengers Initiative,” it launched what...
Unfashionable life at a fashion magazine in ‘September Issue’
Two years ago may as well be 200 in this economy, a fact that gives the easygoing, entertaining court documentary The September Issue a certain poignancy. It's about the run-up to a late-boom-era capitalistic war, a triumph of advertising and frippery over rational ...
Fade to blackout
The Hangover Part III is so jaw-droppingly terrible, America deserves an explanation. Not because this series has become some nation-defining work of art, but because it sure feels like writer/director Todd Phillips just told everyone who likes his films to go “make ...
M. Night trips and falls in the dark
According to The Last Airbender — the latest 3-D offering in theaters, yet barely functional in 2-D or even 1-D — the world’s separate kingdoms are built around fire, air, water, earth and impenetrable, rock-hard exposition. Bringing those first four to the ...
The sound of a true American voice
Ten years ago at the Sundance Film Festival, a new voice in American cinema was announced. The voice was not loud, but it was clear, and it belonged to the 29-year-old Ramin Bahrani...
Well-seasoned action flick
After her uninspired acting in the tedious Wanted, I was leery about seeing Angelina Jolie in another action film, though I loved her as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. She’s back in fine form in Salt, however, as tough CIA field agent Evelyn Salt, forced to clear her ...
Repo this film
Repo Men was awful. Graphic, bloody and with a staggering body count, this is all that’s wrong with Hollywood action films, a glossy sheen on a completely vapid, empty story that works against itself in scene after scene. Then, the worst of all is the surprise ...
Can you see it now?
I bet the person in charge of marketing Colossal named the ulcer they developed “Nacho.” Writer/director Nacho Vigalondo’s latest is nigh-impossible to categorize and misleading...
Guilty of misdirection
Conviction should have been a good film. After a woman’s beloved ne’erdo-well brother is convicted of murder in a tiny hick town, it’s up to her to exonerate him, first through the system and then by going to law school and becoming a one-client attorney. Better yet...
