Movie Reviews
Did You Hear About The Morgans? Review
In Did You Hear About the Morgans?, Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker are supposed to pass for a married couple, but they have all the chemistry of two actors who just met and shook hands moments before the cameras rolled. They don’t even seem to like each other much — I’m fairly certain I saw Parker’s nostrils flaring in one scene — which poses a bit of a problem for a movie that hinges on their characters working out their differences and living happily ever after…read more [Miami Herald]
This is a familiar set-up, used in hundreds of movies to best isolate the comedic potential of the standard fish-out-of-water scenario, but Lawrence doesn’t play the lead characters as bumbling nitwits forced to learn hayseed lessons. No, Paul and Meryl are the liberal, elitist surrogates for the audience. They know things about nutrition and animal cruelty, about style and substance the yokels fail to comprehend. I supposed it’s a harmless film overall, yet “Morgans” straddles that fine line between farce and character assassination. It’s one thing to sit stone-faced watching Lawrence blunder his every single attempt at humor, but the great state of Wyoming doesn’t deserve such a slight, even if it serves a larger portrait of broad comedy. Lawrence never has the Morgans embracing their country education beyond a superficial level of communication (at one point Lawrence gives Meryl and Clay a bizarre scene that compares a man’s sensitivity to a cow’s teat), keeping them at a loathsome level of superiority for the duration of the picture…read more [Brian Orndorf, Dark Horizons]
Sherlock Holmes Review
Schlock Holmes is too brutal. Call it instead The Adventure of the Da Vinci Code Knock-off or The Adventure of the Missing Ending. Either would be equally appropriate. This original story, which borrows heavily from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “canonical” tales, contains multiple Easter Eggs for Holmes fans but fails in the bigger picture: developing a credible narrative. Unduly influenced by both comic books and The Da Vinci Code, Guy Ritchie’s “re-interpretation” of Holmes feels more spastic than kinetic. The camera rarely stops moving and, when it does, the weaknesses of the script become apparent. Conan Doyle wrote 60 adventures starring his famous detective (56 short stories, four novels). Some were preposterous, but none were quite as silly as this one, which at times feels more like overwrought fan fiction than a fully developed Sherlock Holmes tale…read more [ReelViews]
Robert Downey Jr. sounds that self-destructive eccentricity as a keynote from his first appearance in Sherlock Holmes, and his twitchy, winning performance returns to it throughout the film. The interpretation veers sharply away from the tweedy expectations set by Basil Rathbone and others, but it’s as true in its own way to the source. Holmes is a man only fully engaged by life when it offers a direct challenge…read more [A.V. Club]
Avatar Review
Avatar is a fantasy/sci-fi epic that takes place on Pandora, a lush, green planet where an humanoid alien race known as the Na’vi live in total harmony with nature. Humans want to get their hands on some of the valuable minerals contained beneath the planet’s surface, but in order to do that, they need to relocate the natives. To gather intelligence and learn more about their culture, the U.S. military creates genetic Na’vi clones that can be controlled remotely by human soldiers using a neural link. When Jake Sully, a wheelchair-bound Marine, infiltrates the Na’vi clan, he soon finds himself torn between two bodies and two opposing ways of life…read more [FilmJunk]
I just got back home from the world premiere of Avatar here in London. It’s safe to keep reading. You are entering a spoiler-free zone.
I wasn’t expecting much. I attended the 15 minute IMAX preview a few months back and out of context what I saw was pretty. Very pretty. The immersive technology was an obvious step up, but the scenes with the marines came across as just weird on the eye and the sequences with all the alien fauna gave me flashbacks to James Mason clambering through mushrooms forests in Journey to the Centre of the Earth. But what really had me worried was the story…read more [Twitch]
Invictus Review
“Invictus” is Latin for “undefeated” and comes from a poem by William Ernest Henley. Henley was twenty-six and confined to a hospital bed when he wrote the poem; his leg had been amputated just below the knee due to tuberculosis of the bone. Henley wrote the poem to state that despite a crippling and potentially life-ending situation, he would be unbowed and would bounce back stronger than ever before. The country of South Africa was in a similar period of recovery in the mid-1990′s. With apartheid having just been put to an end and Nelson Mandela elected to the office of the President. Mandela had served twenty-seven years in prison for being a leader of the anti-apartheid movement and upon his release was looked upon as a hero from anti-apartheid groups both in and out of the country…read more [411mania.com]
Clint Eastwood’s Invictus is just about what you would except from an inspirational sports story. But, as a film involving Nelson Mandela and the unification/healing of South Africa, it falls unfortunately short.
Eastwood is a ‘classical’ director in most every respect, and sometimes those instincts result in a film of unique power like Letters from Iwo Jima. Other times, they bring about accomplished but stilted ones like The Changeling or Flags of Our Fathers. For Invictus, the award-winning director peers into the South African situation and Mandela’s time as president and hones in on a particular event; the president’s 1995 support of the nation’s rugby team in the World Cup…read more [Atomic Popcorn]
Ninja Assassin Review
Ninja Assassin had a lot of potential to become the dream film of many fanboys. And until those fanboys see it, it may remain so. However, I found my dream slightly shattered after witnessing the film for myself. The first area in which this film fails, and the element that works entirely to its detriment, is in story. For a movie like this to work without exception we either need to believe in the ninja as a real being traveling the world unnoticed and assassinating people, or we need to not care that they aren’t real…read more [Joblo]
New Moon Review
“The Twilight Saga: New Moon” is the second movie based on the series of four vampire-based fantasy and romance books by author Stephenie Meyer. The New Moon movie continues the story of the first Twilight movie about the ill-fated romance between mortal Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart, and vampire Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson.
New Moon goes through great pains to present itself as a descendent of Romeo And Juliet, except without all that icky tragedy in the end. There are warring clans—in this case, werewolves and vampires—a rival suitor, tragic miscommunication, and at the center of it all, two self-absorbed teenage lovers. Throw in a revenge subplot and an ancient, power-hungry clan of evil Italian vampires, and it all sounds potentially thrilling. But in spite of its wealth of conflict, New Moon suffers from a dearth of accompanying tension and excitement, thanks to the increasingly tedious relationship at its center…read more [AVClub]
2012 Review
“2012” delivers everything you could possibly want from a blockbuster disaster movie, though you have to wonder how Roland Emmerich is going to top the end of the world.
It’s not so much that the Earth is destroyed, but that it’s done so thoroughly. “2012,” the mother of all disaster movies (and the father, and the extended family) spends half an hour on ominous set-up scenes (scientists warn, strange events occur, prophets rant and of course a family is introduced) and then unleashes two hours of cataclysmic special events hammering the Earth relentlessly.
This is fun. “2012″ delivers what it promises, and since no sentient being will buy a ticket expecting anything else, it will be, for its audiences, one of the most satisfactory films of the year. It even has real actors in it. Like all the best disaster movies, it’s funniest at its most hysterical. You think you’ve seen end-of-the-world movies? This one ends the world, stomps on it, grinds it up and spits it out…read more [Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times]
A Christmas Carol Review
Charles Dickens’ beloved holiday story “A Christmas Carol” gets the 3D treatment, and the result is a visually stunning big-screen experience I’m sure many cinema goers out there will enjoy to the fullest extent. As far as I’m concerned, my feelings about this one are mixed.
The story doesn’t really require a lengthy introduction. The holiday season is in full swing, and Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) despises Christmas and everyone celebrating it. Then he’s visited by three ghosts who take him on an emotional journey, and before you know it, his meanness is gone for good…read more [ScreeningLog]
It’s hard to believe that Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol 166 years ago, but here we are in 2009 and Robert Zemeckis has spent $180 million to produce a motion-capture animated film that retells the famous story. The movie opens this weekend on more than 2,000 digital 3D screens and features the voices of Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, Cary Elwes and Robin Wright Penn. Despite first being published on December 19, 1843, A Christmas Carol remains one of the most popular, heart-warming holiday tales ever written. I’m sure you don’t need a recap of Scrooge’s encounters with the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future…read more [Empire Movies]
Saw 6 Review
Has there ever been a movie franchise as user-friendly as the “Saw” films? “Saw VI,” the latest installment, may have a new director (Kevin Greutert), but the writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, collaborating on their third consecutive “Saw,” make sure that it’s as customer-service-oriented as ever.
Somewhere within the Saw universe’s ridiculously convoluted back story is a film showing how the dying “Jigsaw Killer” John Kramer (Tobin Bell) won the lottery, set up corporate offices, and hired legions of worker elves to build a “torture district” the size of Disneyland. It would be a helluva lot more entertaining than watching his uber-secret second protégé (Mandylor, Mandylor, Costas Mandylor) tiptoe around the events of the previous films, which was all that the abysmal Saw V really had to offer…read more [DreadCentral]
I really don’t want to talk about the plot, because if you’ve seen a few of these films, then the point of how to have fun with them is the twists and turns of the stories. Saw VI is a very satisfying sequel for a handful of reasons. One of the complaints of the last few sequels, were people felt each entry was incomplete because the film’s would leave plot points left unanswered. Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton make Saw VI into a caper for the previous films, finally answering some long wondered questions, while juggling an interesting solo story. We get questions answered, which should please the long time fans, and tells a sick little moralistic tale that goes back to the origin of Jigsaw. Saw VI won’t win over any newbies, but it doesn’t have too. If you’re late in this game, go back to the beginning. Maybe that’s good advice for all of us Saw fans, because you’ll appreciate this film a lot more, with all of the subplots fresh in your mind…read more [KillerFilm]
