Screen
Cuteness gets old
If the French-made, globally minded study in adorableness known as Babies keeps a few Westernized parents from over-scheduling, micromanaging, helicoptering and snowplowing their way through their neurotic kids’ existence, then I say give director Thomas Balmes the...
More vulgarity, please
In 1956, not long after she married Death of a Salesman playwright Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe made a movie with director and star Laurence Olivier at England’s Pinewood Studios. The film, The Prince and the Showgirl, came from Terence Rattigan’s drawing-room ...
2012, will you marry me?
I want the 2012 year-in-film to have my babies. Heck, I’ll have its babies; it has been so durn good I’d totally go seahorse for it. Before I reduce a year that renewed my cinematic soul to a series of arbitrary numbers and rankings, a quick caveat: Because ...
Right story, wrong script
Red Tails squanders a great subject, reducing the real-life struggles and fierce heroics of the Tuskegee Airmen to rickety cliché. Some of the action is fun. But if something about that statement doesn’t sound right, well, there’s your chief problem with Red Tails. ...
Review: ‘Lone Ranger’ is Kemosloppy
Good news, Washington Redskins! For one glorious weekend in the summer of 2013, your unapologetically racist franchise mascot is not the most grotesque pop culture representation of Native Americans! One can only imagine owner Dan Snyder pounding copious shots of “...
You don’t want to ‘Hear About the Morgans’
Pure, communal silence can be a wonderful thing, and if you haven’t experienced any lately, I recommend you see the first available screening of the new romantic comedy Did You Hear About the Morgans? Each of its theoretical punch lines is preceded by an eerie second...
Strangled love
Set in Scranton, Pa., and Brooklyn, N.Y., Blue Valentine depicts a working class marriage hanging by threads of resentment, contempt and love, a very tricky braid to unravel. At its best, the drama captures little bits and pieces of a relationship, the telltale signs...
‘Broken Embraces’ isn’t funny
"Films have to be finished," intones Mateo, the blind-former-filmmaker. "Even if you do it blindly...
‘Valentine’s Day’ an ideal date movie
When making movies, it's possible to have too much of a good thing...
