February 2010
28 posts
Coming Soon to a TV Near You, March 1 - 7, 2010
The Namesake (IFC, Thursday, March 4, 6:30 am, 1:05 pm)
Director Mira Nair’s tale of two generations of an Indian-American family explores the ever-slippery divide between cultural identity and assimilation, but The Namesake is hardly a polemic. Instead, it offers complex, richly drawn characters who earn our interest and empathy.
The film begins in 1977 Calcutta and the arranged...
Michael Smith Review: The Last Station
A film centered on the life of Russian author Leo Tolstoy might sound beyond literary to many, perhaps even ponderous. But “The Last Station” is unlike any Tolstoy story previously told, closer to a laugh-a-minute Leo for the short-attention-span age.
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George Lang Review: Cop Out
Kevin Smith spent his early teenage years in the era of “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Fletch” and “Lethal Weapon,” movies that melded smartly stupid comedy with blood-and-guts action. This is a specific subgenre that opened a gushing sewer of bad buddy flicks, but Smith’s “Cop Out” is about as close as any director has gotten to “Beverly Hills Cop” in a long time. It’s so...
Brandy McDonnell Review: The Last Station
The war and not peace that filled Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s final year of life has the epic pull of one of his novels in “The Last Station.
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Michael Smith Review: Shutter Island
The basic synopsis for “Shutter Island” is that a pair of detectives arrive at an island facility that houses criminally insane patients, one of whom has recently escaped. At least, that’s what filmmaker Martin Scorsese wants you to think is happening. By the time that this twisty mystery unfolds its ideas of how the past haunts people, how guilt consumes and how memories shape...
Joe Wertz Review: In the Loop
A British satire of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, “In the Loop” is irreverent, inappropriate and probably spot-on.
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Coming Soon to a TV Near You, Feb. 22 - 28, 2010
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (TCM, Thursday, Feb. 25 9pm)
Among John Ford’s final pictures, 1962’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance reveals the legendary filmmaker poking a stick at the Old West mythologies he helped create. It’s unmistakably a Ford Western, exploring the tensions between the rugged individualism of the West and its inevitable transformation into...
Shawn S. Lealos Review: Shutter Island
When Shutter Island ended, I sat there for a moment awe struck at what I had seen. I will admit up front, I walked into the theater spoiled to the ending so instead of being blindsided by the eventual reveal I was looking to piece together the clues throughout the movie. I think that knowledge helps me appreciate the movie more than others. There was an older couple sitting next to me who was...
George Lang Review: Shutter Island
Crime novelist Dennis Lehane’s stated intent with his critically lauded 2003 novel “Shutter Island” was to make a modern Gothic novel in the vein of the Bronte sisters, a “Wuthering Heights” set in a spooky Massachusetts insane asylum. From a literary standpoint, it was a wild pitch from one of the best crime novelists.
Director Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of “Shutter Island”...
Coming Soon to a TV Near You, Feb. 15 - 21, 2010
Metropolitan (Sundance Channel, Friday, Feb. 19, 9:30 am, 2:45 pm)
Whit Stillman’s 1990 confection of young and affluent New York intelligentsia is so delightfully ludicrous, what with its F. Scott Fitzgerald-meets-J.D. Salinger vibe, that in lesser hands the whole soiree would have evaporated like cheap champagne.
But Stillman’s gift for solipsistic blowhards and the hermetically sealed...
Michael Smith Review: The Wolfman
“The Wolfman” has more decapitated heads than a French Revolution documentary, more missing arms and legs than “Jaws.” This new take on the classic tale of half-man, half-beast is missing a lot of other things, too, like a brain. Special effects, however, it has in spades.
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Kim Brown Review: Valentine's Day
I have a love/hate relationship with “Valentine’s Day.”
It’s the kind of movie that entirely depends upon your mood.
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Michael Smith Review: Creation
Charles Darwin has long been the flashpoint figure in the battle of wills between science and religion, and a new film about the man gives some insight into his theorizing as well as his personal life.
“Creation” finds Darwin as a man who enjoys short bursts of happiness found in his children, but who is otherwise a morose figure, overcome by guilt with respect to the death of a...
Joshua Blevins Peck Review: Dear John
Dear John continues the Valentine’s Day movie massacre on the multiplex. Dear John scraps the comedy and goes full-tilt for romantic drama, and if it were good, all would be forgiven.
Unfortunately, Dear John is more difficult to sit through than a comedy because at least a comedy is light and fun, whereas this is full of heavy-handed saccharine and is so ponderous it feels endless.
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Rod Lott DVD Review: The Boys Are Back
For his role as a widower in “The Boys Are Back,” Clive Owen was short-listed last year as a possible Oscar contender. As we saw last week, that didn’t happen, but it remains a good performance, so for a well-executed, underseen drama, rent it on DVD.
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Mike Robertson Review: Dear John
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Joe Wertz Review: Edge of Darkness
Directed by Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale,” “The Legend of Zorro”), “Edge of Darkness” isn’t really edgy or dark, but it still works.
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Michael Smith Review: From Paris with Love
John Travolta shoots, but he does not score in “From Paris With Love,” an early candidate for the most gosh-awful movie of 2010.
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Coming Soon to a TV Near You, Feb. 8-14, 2010
Chinatown (TCM, Saturday, Feb. 13, 12:30 a.m.)
In these pages, I try spotlighting films that might not be widely known, but I’m making an exception here. If you haven’t seen Chinatown, make sure to set your TiVo — and shame on you for having lived your life without experiencing this classic noir thriller from the not-so-noir year of 1974.
Set in the Los Angeles of the late 1930s, the...
Rod Lott DVD Review: Big Fan
Comedian Patton Oswalt turns in a terrific performance in “Big Fan,” and it’s not a comedic one.
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George Lang DVD Review: Good Hair
The sharp-witted and insightful documentary “Good Hair” originated from a question posed by Chris Rock’s 5-year-old daughter, Lola: “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?” So Rock, abetted by fellow comedian Jeff Stilson’s agile direction, searched for the meaning of that question, which is weighted by race, perception of physical beauty, social standing and good old American...
Gene Triplett Review: Dear John
Director Lasse Hallstrom specializes in steering sad and serious stories clear of potential sloppy sentimentality, and he manages to navigate the tricky emotional terrain quite skillfully in “Dear John,” considering that it’s based on a novel by the boss best-selling author of the romance genre, Nicholas Sparks (“The Notebook,” “A Walk to Remember,” ad nauseam).
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Kim Brown Review: Dear John
A boy meets a girl named Savannah in Charleston — this could only be the beginning of a film based on a Nicholas Sparks novel.
“Dear John” stars up-and-coming actors Channing Tatum (“G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”) and Amanda Seyfried (“Mamma Mia!”), but even their sparkling good looks and direction from Oscar-nominated Lasse Hallström (“Chocolat”)...
Joshua Blevins Peck Review: Police, adjective
When we think of cops in movies we tend to visualize men of action, ready to kick down a door to make an arrest or pull out their giant gun to cajole a confession out of the guilty party.
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Clif' Warren Review: Crazy Heart
Jeff Bridges reaches another career defining high in “Crazy Heart”; not that this star has ever delivered an uninteresting performance.
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Kathryn Jenson White Review: An Education
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Mike Robertson Review: Crazy Heart
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Kathryn Jenson White Review: A Single Man
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