Screen
Company bust
A single spontaneous moment pops up in the otherwise obsessively well-ordered ensemble drama The Company Men, written and directed by ER and West Wing alum John Wells. It’s a quick shot in a hotel room tryst of Maria Bello bopping back into frame, unexpectedly, ...
A jumbled mess
As a family demographic product, Rango has a million selling points, among them an unusually strong voice cast headed by Johnny Depp in tremulous-aesthete mode, a popular live-action director making his feature animation debut, and a twist on a genre temporarily back...
Payoff never comes in ‘The Canyon’
When newlyweds in movies insist on taking their honeymoon in...
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...
Delightful con artists
Sean-Pierre Jeunet hasn’t directed many films, but they’ve all been terrific, distinctive and stylish. Two you’ll hopefully have enjoyed already are The City of Lost Children and the weird Amélie. With Micmacs (original title Micmacs à tire-larigot) Jeunet moves ...
Freaky Frequency
For a movie reviewer, having a favorite genre kinda feels like a parent having a favorite child; oh, they totally do, they’re just not supposed to talk about it. Well, just like your mom told your sister when you were out of earshot, if all other genres were out of ...
Unnecessary 3-D
Comic effrontery is the Bic that lights the bong in the Harold & Kumar movies, but willfully strained outrageousness can turn sour like that. For a definition of “that,” there’s A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, the weakest of the three. Here, the boy-men — now ...
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 ...
Damon’s above the corn
Pap, but easygoing pap with a cast you can live with for a couple of hours, We Bought a Zoo is co-writer and director Cameron Crowe’s adaptation of a memoir by Benjamin Mee entitled We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the...
Bright Phoenix
The most laughable part of Her isn’t the complex, sophisticated romantic relationship between a man and his software operating system; it’s the high-waisted, Clint Eastwood-esque pants everybody wears. Forget flying cars; just promise us a future where we don’t have ...
