Screen
Tolerable levels of cute
We’ve all been there, that moment in time when destiny knocks on the door, and we’d rather just yell “Go away, I already have plans!” So it’s easy to identify with E.B., the drum-playing rocker in the lead role of Hop. His destiny? He has to take over for his dad as ...
BIFF: The Rocket
Superstitions of rural Laos lay the groundwork for this award-winning film from Australian director Kim Mordaunt...
Singing on the ice
I admired much of the original Happy Feet (2006), but five years later, I’m still considering suing its makers for emotional distress...
All the president’s meh
Although he may still be a panty dropper to the baby boomer set, Robert Redford looks like he needs a good nap. The bags under his eyes are scene-stealing, uncredited supporting actors in The Company You Keep, a ’70s-style thriller about investigative journalism that...
Like a Joss
This was going to be a rabid, frothing defense of the superhero genre, complete with impassioned pleas that appealed to cinematic intellectuals who are apt to dismiss such films. But Tom Hiddleston, who ironically plays the evil Loki in The Avengers, got there first...
‘(Untitled)’ too repetitive
The new comedy (Untitled) has the punctuation and the thinness of a gallery wall label. It wanders the exhibition spaces, lofts and performance venues of Chelsea and other parts of Manhattan, eavesdropping on the narcissistic mutterings — funny, some of them, now and...
Corruption of small-town innocence
They were staples of popular literature, Broadway and the movies long before the movies could talk: comic yarns in which small-town naifs pack their bags and hit the big city, where they learn about life and love and what they’ve been missing...
Cross-cultural animation
Five years ago, the Bristol, England-based Aardman animation folks — who created the stop-motion legends Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep and therefore are eligible for sainthood — made the digitally animated British/American co-production Flushed Away. Jam-...
High-octane hit
Faster is a throwback to the action films of the 1970s, from the production color schemes to the film stock and camera angles utilized by cinematographer Michael Grady. If you’re not familiar with classics like Shaft, The French Connection, Dirty Harry, Enter the ...
A pail of awful
Forget Jack and Jill and the fact that Adam Sandler plays them both and not particularly well in his new “twins” comedy. Al Pacino is almost reason enough to see it, all by his bigger-than-life self...