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Starring: Michelle Williams Review: Simple story, beautifully told. A distressed dropout named Wendy (the sublime Michelle Williams) and her dog Lucy hop in her beat-up Honda and leave Indiana for Alaska, Wendy’s cautious hope for a new frontier. But when the car dies in Oregon and Lucy goes missing, Wendy faces hard choices and a hard-pressed America that keeps closing doors. I won’t say more, except that director and co-writer Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy) is a true cinema poet who works miracles in miniature. And she finds the perfect collaborator in Williams, an actress of grit and amazing grace. Rating: 3 Stars |
Wendy and Lucy
December 10th, 2008 · No Comments
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Revolutionary Road
December 10th, 2008 · No Comments
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Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Kathryn Hahn, D… Review: What does a cult 1961 Richard Yates novel about a 1950s marriage rotting in the burbs have to say to a new century? Plenty, and hold on, because the raw and riveting Revolutionary Road hits you where it hurts. To hear Kate Winslet, as April Wheeler, express her desire “to be wonderful in the world” is to be reminded of stifled urges with no expiration date. Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, as her husband, Frank, could not be better in the roles of young marrieds who (shades of Mad Men) move from Manhattan to the suburbs, promising themselves it’s all just temporary. April dreams of taking off for Paris, where she’ll work while Frank pursues his artistic impulses. Add two kids, thwarted ambitions, adultery — Frank with a secretary (a vivid Zoe Kazan) and April with a married neighbor… Rating: 3 Stars |
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Cadillac Records
December 4th, 2008 · No Comments
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Starring: Emmanuelle Chriqui, Adrien Brody, Gabrielle Union, Beyonce Knowle… Review: Beyonc‟ Knowles could have nabbed an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. That’s how good she is playing it all sexy, sassy and druggy as Etta James, the R&B singer who found the soul in songs like “At Last.” Too bad for Knowles that she’s only part of Darnell Martin’s rushed mess of a movie that jams the story of Chicago-based Chess Records into one incoherent package. Adrien Brody plays Leonard Chess, who started the company in the 1950s with his brother Phil (we hardly see him) to record great blues artists and pay them with Caddys. There’s Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters, Eamonn Walker’s as Howlin’ Wolf, and a lively Mos Def as Chuck Berry. It’s all a blur, except for the music. That’s workin’. Rating: 2 Stars |
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Australia
November 25th, 2008 · No Comments
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Starring: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, David Wenham, Jack Thompson, Bryan B… Review: If looks were everything, director Baz Luhrmann’s epic salute to his native land would be the movie of the year. But, crikey, a padded script bloated with subplots and shameless sentimentality can wear you down. Nicole Kidman pushes way too hard (and the strain shows) as Lady Sarah Ashley, a Brit snob who comes to Australia in 1939 to catch her husband cheating and instead finds him murdered. It’s not long before she takes over his cattle ranch, befriends a half-caste boy, Nullah (cutie Brandon Walters), victimized by the government’s racial policies against Aborigines, and beds down with the Drover (a lively, sexy Hugh Jackman), the cowboy who drives her cheeky bulls to market. There’s also World War II, the 1942 Japanese bombing of Darwin and umpteen choruses of “Over the Rainbow,” the… Rating: 2 Stars |
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Frost/Nixon
November 25th, 2008 · No Comments
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Starring: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Rebecca Hall, Toby Jo… Review: A film version of a play about two talking heads. Please. It shouldn’t work at all. But it does work, spectacularly, as a matter of fact. It helps that the two people are disgraced President Richard M. Nixon and British charm boy David Frost, the TV interviewer who waved millions in front of the Watergate trickster to lure him on camera for the trial he never had. Ancient history? Well, the interview took place in 1977, and we know the outcome in advance. “I let down the American people,” Nixon admitted to Frost and an audience of more than 45 million. All the more remarkable, then, that director Ron Howard has turned Peter Morgan’s stage success into a grabber of a movie laced with tension, stinging wit and potent human drama. Start with “magnificent” to describe Frank Langella’s… Rating: 3 Stars |
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Milk
November 25th, 2008 · No Comments
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Starring: Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Emile Hirsch, James Franco Review: Maybe you don’t know a damn thing about gay activist Harvey Milk. Maybe you ought to know that President-elect Barack Obama isn’t the only community organizer who went on to make a difference. Maybe thoughtful filmmaking, no matter how incendiary and intimate, isn’t worth squat at an infantilized multiplex. Stop me now. There’s really no maybe about Milk, directed with a poet’s eye by Gus Van Sant from a richly detailed script by Big Love writer Dustin Lance Black. It’s a total triumph, brimming with humor, heart, sexual heat, political provocation and a crying need to stir things up, just like Harvey did. If there’s a better movie around this year, with more bristling purpose, I sure as hell haven’t seen it. San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be… Rating: 4 Stars |
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Twilight
November 21st, 2008 · No Comments
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Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, … Review: Bummer. The vampires have no fangs. The humans are humdrum. The special effects and makeup define cheeseball. And the movie crowds in so many characters from Stephenie Meyer?s book that Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) is less a director than a traffic cop. But there?s a reason that Twilight has already become the movie equivalent of a bestseller: The love story has teeth. Props to Kristen Stewart, 18, and Robert Pattinson, 22, for playing this uncool-girl-meets-undead-boy story with genuine romantic ardor. They?re both terrific. Even when the movie gets really silly, they never do. Stewart (Panic Room, Into the Wild) brings just the right blend of ferocity and feeling to the role of Bella Swan, the loner from Phoenix who leaves her mom to live with her police-chief dad in rarely sunny… Rating: 2 Stars |
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Dukes
November 19th, 2008 · No Comments
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Starring: Chazz Palminteri, Robert Davi, Peter Bogdanovich, Miriam Margolye… Review: Here’s the little movie that could, a potent directing debut for actor Robert Davi, an immortal Bond villain in License to Kill. Davi plays Danny DePasquale, a star in his 20s when he and his chubby-chaser pal George Zucco (Chazz Palminteri, in top form) lead a doo-wop group called the Dukes. Cut ahead a few decades, and the guys are struggling in California, working in an Italian restaurant run by their Aunt Vee (Miriam Margolyes) and hassling their manager (a terrific Peter Bogdanovich) to repackage them as an oldies group. Danny and George dream of turning Aunt Vee’s trattoria into a doo-wop club. But who has the bucks? So they cook up a heist that defines the term “fool’s gold.” For all the kickass fun, Davi offers a moving portrait of a man caught in the process of trying to… Rating: 3 Stars |
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The Dukes
November 19th, 2008 · No Comments
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Starring: Robert Davi, Chazz Palminteri Review: Here’s the little movie that could, a potent directing debut for actor Robert Davi, an immortal Bond villain in License to Kill. Davi plays Danny DePasquale, a star in his 20s when he and his chubby-chaser pal George Zucco (Chazz Palminteri, in top form) lead a doo-wop group called the Dukes. Cut ahead a few decades, and the guys are struggling in California, working in an Italian restaurant run by their Aunt Vee (Miriam Margolyes) and hassling their manager (a terrific Peter Bogdanovich) to repackage them as an oldies group. Danny and George dream of turning Aunt Vee’s trattoria into a doo-wop club. But who has the bucks? So they cook up a heist that defines the term “fool’s gold.” For all the kickass fun, Davi offers a moving portrait of a man caught in the process of trying to… Rating: 3 Stars |
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Christmas Tale
November 11th, 2008 · No Comments
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Starring: Catherine Deneuve Review: Holiday films in the hands of Hollywood make me puke. Mom is usually expiring from something terminal while the family dresses the Christmas tree with brave smiles. This French knockout, tough-minded and all the more affecting for it, turned my head around. It hits hard — even the laughs are killers. I should say that Mom (Catherine Deneuve, still an actress and beauty to die for) is slipping away from liver cancer. So what makes this one magic? Start with director Arnaud Desplechin, who co-wrote the deft script with Emmanuel Bourdieu. Desplechin (Kings and Queen, How I Got Into an Argument) is a world-class filmmaker, not some studio hack. He can maintain a light touch even in the face of tragedy. He can layer a film so that it’s always springing surprises. He can reference… Rating: 3 Stars |
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