Screen
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 “...
Realism thwarted
Made with or without U.S. Department of Defense cooperation, fictional films about the American military favor narratives in which (mostly) men buck authority, risk their necks in bouts of jealous infighting and go the lone-wolf route in pursuit of the enemy. Act ...
Indifference wins the day
The best romantic comedies have a blithe, take-it-or-leave-it spirit. Larry Crowne has the opposite. It’s the neediest movie of 2011, and one of the phoniest...
Wahlberg pulls through
Playing a reformed cargo smuggler sucked back into the game, Mark Wahlberg is the star of Contraband, a fairly entertaining remake of the 2008 Icelandic thriller Reykjavik-Rotterdam...
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 ...
Reel to reel | Week of July 4, 2013
20 Feet From StardomIn his compelling new film, director Morgan Neville shines a spotlight on the untold true story of the backup singers behind some of the greatest musical legends of the 21st century. At Mayan...
Arrested development
It´s not easy being mean, as Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody’s latest project, Young Adult — directed by her Juno collaborator, Jason Reitman — goes about illustrating with an intriguing, unsettled blend of pity and pitilessness...
A thriller for grandma
The Tourist is a facsimile of a masquerade of a gloss on Charade, and on all the lesser cinematic charades that followed in the wake of director Stanley Donen’s 1963 picture. While it’s fairly easy to take in its retro way — it certainly takes it easy on the audience...
The black market meets the stock market
Killing Them Softly is an ambitious mashup of black market and stock market politics, wrapped in the guise of a straight-up crime movie. If that sounds like it’d be hard to pull off, it is. If you think it’s too much for one film, you’re right. Killing Them Softly ...
One for the fan boys
Primarily for dues-paying “X-Men” club members in good standing, rather than anyone wandering by a multiplex wondering if the prequel stands on its own, X-Men: First Class settles for moderately engrossing second-class mutant super-heroism. Plus it includes January...
