“They’re all about where people come from. Nobody seems to wonder where somebody’s going.” So says the Depression-era bank-robber-cum-folk-hero John Dillinger upon surveying the clientele of a chic Chicago eatery in a key scene from Michael Mann’s Public Enemies. And, much like its subject, Mann’s exhilarating movie exists in a…
Though hardly landmarks of narrative or animation art, the first two Ice Age films were warm and goofy and appealing; John Leguizamo’s adorably sibilant Sid the Sloth remains a much-quoted guy in our household. But as with Shrek and countless other overextended studio franchises, the well has run bone-dry. Part…
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a bewildering, noisy, sloppy, cynical piece of work, a movie that sneers at the audience for 147 minutes and expects us to lap it up as entertainment — and be grateful. This is blockbuster porn absent even the suggestion of care or concern for…
Character is destiny — at least for Woody Allen’s Whatever Works. Allen’s exercise in Woody Allen nostalgia opens with a snatch of Groucho Marx singing his trademark paradoxical assertion (“Hello, I must be going”) and is powered almost entirely by the presence of a single, larger-than-life, and less-than-likeable figure. Whatever…
Fifteen minutes after seeing The Proposal, I’d forgotten I’d seen The Proposal. Well, that’s not entirely true: By then, it had simply merged in my memory with a thousand other films just like it — those in which phony lovers bound together by dubious circumstances become honest-to-kissin’ couples in just…
Eddie Murphy is a Denver investment consultant, Evan, with a workaholic schedule that leaves little space for 7-year-old daughter Olivia (Yara Shahidi). Adding to his pressures is the meteoric rise of a co-worker, shtick Native American “Whitefeather,” whose financial consultations come couched in pseudo-mysticism and PowerPoint razzle-dazzle (played by Thomas…
Want to know how a city works? Start by watching 1974’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, a primer in which subway hijackers test how long it’ll take a million bucks to pass through Gotham’s plumbing. Turns out an hour is just enough time to roust the hated mayor…
Notwithstanding all the boomer studio executives who grow misty-eyed recollecting nerdy childhoods parked in front of the Krofft brothers’ television creation, it’s hard to think of a compelling reason to remake the popular 1970s sci-fi adventure show for the big screen. Brad Silberling’s amiable big puppy of an update has…
What Fletch was to plaid-checked water-cooler wits in the ’80s, what National Lampoon’s Van Wilder was to college-bound douches at the dawn of Dubya, that’s what 2003’s Old School is to Gen-X frat rats — a secret-handshake movie. A shaggy, intermittently hilarious wish-fulfillment nightmare about sorta dissatisfied, sorta middle-age dudesters…
The face of Mike Tyson stares out from the screen like a sentry — intent, sober, watchful. The camera sits close, the framing is tight, and as we lock eyes with the former heavyweight champ who could shatter an opponent’s confidence with little more than a glance, he seems to…
Sam Raimi wants to go home again. Often a drifting virtuoso in the years before finding his Spider-Man gig, with Drag Me to Hell Raimi defaults to the horror romps that made his name (namely, the Evil Dead trilogy), bringing the old barreling camera and viscous ickiness back and serving…
First of all, Up is not a movie about a cranky old coot who, with the help of a roly-poly Boy Scout, finds his inner child during a series of magical adventures experienced from the front porch of a dilapidated manse held aloft by hundreds of helium-filled balloons. Such, of…
Not quite The Further Adventures of Cain & Abel, the second coming of Beavis & Butt-Head, or Peyton Meets Eli, but energetic fun nonetheless, Rudo y Cursi is a multiple brother act: It’s written and directed by Carlos Cuarón and produced by elder sibling Alfonso, director of Y Tu Mamá…
Both warning and advertisement, the Terminator films are technophobic teases, selling tickets by promising this decade’s model of killing machine: the classic V8 1984 Schwarzenegger; the bullet-streamlined, liquid-metal ’91 Robert Patrick of T2: Judgment Day; Kristanna Loken’s 2003 T-X (with burgundy pleather upholstery). Terminator Salvation, a departure in many ways,…
Director Kirby Dick doesn’t actually stick his camera under any Capitol Hill bathroom stalls in the new documentary Outrage, but his goal is more or less the same: to catch conservative, family-values politicians with their pants down. Armed with a chorus of incriminating voices from across the alternative press and…
Summer Movie Salvation
Angels and Demons Has a Need for Speed
It’s difficult for this longtime Trekkie to review J.J. Abrams’s relaunching of the U.S.S. Enterprise. It’s difficult to dispassionately dole out compliments and complaints per the job description. Because, yes, the professional critic understands: This is Paramount Pictures’ latest effort to jump-start a profitable but long-stalled franchise, to do for…
Without fail, the dullest installment in any superhero movie franchise is the origin story, during which audiences eagerly awaiting The Big Bad Guy have to suffer through, yaaaawn, scenes of childhood trauma, romantic tragedy, and other expository effluvia, by which point the closing credits are fast approaching. Alas, the X-Men…
John Waters Brings His Filthy World to MGLFF
How long does it take Sasha to get fierce in this almost-tongue-in-cheek Fatal Attraction retread? Too long — and even after Beyoncé Knowles (who executive-produced, as did her daddy) delivers the promising line “I’ll show you crazy!” to Lisa (Ali Larter), the predatory temp who’s been messing with her asset-manager…
Two weeks after jowly Matthew Perry transformed into pretty Zac Efron to relive his adolescence in 17 Again, Warner Bros. releases Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, another backward and backward-looking child-is-father-to-the-man rom-com, with Matthew McConaughey, who, 18 years Efron’s senior and slightly butcher, has just a few more years of prettiness…
