(Jessica Miglio/Warner Bros.) Long-distance relationships are the center of study in Going the Distance, Warner Bros’ unexpectedly bawdy, often quite funny end-of-summer entry. But the film itself struggles to survive at least as much as its bicoastal pair of leading lovers. You see, it’s hard out there for a romantic comedy. In the age of [...]
Tags: Comedy, Drew Barrymore, film, Going the Distance, Justin Long, movie, review, romantic
(Giles Keyte/Focus) It requires careful skill to be an assassin: exemplary marksmanship, precision in movement, and certainty in intention. The same can be said of successful filmmaking, and even of convincing performance. It’s a good thing, then, that Focus Features’ The American, a meticulously crafted, retro-styled exercise in vigilance and meditation, subsists on those who [...]
Tags: action, American, film, George Clooney, movie, review, thriller
It’s quite ironic that Eat Pray Love, the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling memoir, is being pegged as “boring” or “uneventful.” It is in these very qualities—the estimations of our immediate perceptions, or reactions from a persistent quest for superficial gratification—that the film cautions against placing value. Rather, Eat Pray Love champions soul-searching in [...]
Tags: Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, film, James Franco, Javier Bardem, Julia Roberts, movie, review, Richard Jenkins, Ryan Murphy, weekend movies
(Merie Weismiller Wallace/Paramount) This weekend, Paramount Pictures invites you to a Dinner for Schmucks. If I were you, I wouldn’t be so quick to RSVP. Paul Rudd plays Tim, an earnest financial analyst hoping to fill a recently vacated upper-level position. His boss (Bruce Greenwood) is all but ready to give it to him, too, [...]
Tags: 3D, cats, Charlie St. Cloud, Comedy, Dinner for Schmucks, dogs, film, High School Musical, movie, Paul Rudd, review, Steve Carell, weekend movies, Zac Efron
(Andrew Schwartz/Columbia) “Who is Salt?” inquires the promotional push for the latest Angelina Jolie-starring spy thriller from Columbia Pictures. It’s a question we ponder often during the film, and one whose answer is well explored, unexpected, and not so simple, really. The story proper begins like a punch-line: so a guy walks into the Central [...]
Tags: action, Angelina Jolie, Annette Bening, Comedy, film, Julianne Moore, Kids Are All Right, LGBT, movie, review, Salt, spy, thriller, weekend movies
Inception (Warner Bros.) (Warner Bros./Stephen Vaughan) So here’s the problem with Inception. Molded from remarkable ambition and complexity, the film must spend a considerable amount of time introducing and explaining its significant set of rules and procedures. At the same time, Inception requires us to understand these rules—to grasp this intricate swirl of concepts—in order [...]
Tags: action, Christopher Nolan, Ellen Page, film, Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio, movie, review, weekend movies
Hello, good readers! You may have noticed I’ve been absent from these parts the past few weeks, so let’s get back up to speed with the movie world, shall we? First, a new release: the animated Despicable Me, from Universal Pictures. The year has featured a robust slate of block-busting animated fare—from Dreamworks’ lovely How [...]
Tags: 3D, Adam Sandler, animated, Cameron Diaz, Cyrus, Despicable Me, Eclipse, film, Grown Ups, Inception, Karate Kid, Knight and Day, Last Airbender, movie, Predators, review, Shyamalan, Steve Carell, Tom Cruise, Toy Story, Toy Story 3, Twilight, Winter's Bone
The A-Team (20th Century Fox) (Michael Muller/20th Century Fox) Whipped, nipped, and tucked into submission, The A-Team is an expensive-looking, high-gloss action bonanza, so calculative as to feel mechanical, and so unobtrusive or unchallenging in any way that it’s almost spooky. Four renegade army types team up for militaristic operations under the US Army’s banner [...]
Tags: A-Team, action, Annette Bening, Bradley Cooper, drama, film, Liam Neeson, Mother and Child, movie, Naomi Watts, review, Rodrigo Garcia, Samuel L. Jackson, weekend movies
Movies of late have been… loud. From the bombastic rocket-launch of Iron Man 2, to the sting of swords and arrows in Robin Hood, to the kinetic furor of the latest Shrek installment. Then the sandy, shrieky inanity of the Sex and the City gals and a certain Prince of Persia, and just last weekend, [...]
Tags: Annette Bening, Big Love, director, film, In Treatment, independent, interview, Jimmy Smits, Kerry Washington, Mother and Child, movie, Naomi Watts, Nine Lives, Rodrigo Garcia, Samuel L. Jackson, Six Feet Under, Sopranos, writer
Please Give (Sony Classics) There’s nothing so extraordinary about Please Give, the latest from female-centric filmmaker Nicole Holofcener, and that’s precisely the point. The film is a reflection of real women working through real issues in our real world—really. Holofcener crafts intensely believable characters in an atmosphere imbued with authenticity, and she does so with [...]
Tags: Catherine Keener, film, movie, Please Give, review, weekend movies
