Starring:
Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig
Review:
See this darkly comic character study unburdened by
preconceptions. Writer-director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and
the Whale) walks the fragile line between humor and
heartbreak. Ben Stiller is exceptional as Roger Greenberg, a failed
New York musician housesitting for his brother in the Hollywood
Hills and wondering how life sent him adrift. Selfish, neurotic and
often […]

Continue reading " Greenberg "

Starring:
Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Seann William Scott
Review:
Kevin Smith has taken so much stupid heat for being “too fat to
fly” that it would be sweet to report that Cop Out is a
return to form for the writer-director of Clerks,
Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike
Back. But Smith didn’t even write this hit-and-miss gag
machine. […]

Continue reading " Cop Out "

Starring:
Review: Don’t let anyone tell you too much about this spellbinder from Austrian writer-director Michael Haneke (Caché). Shot in stunning black-and-white by the gifted Christian Berger, The White Ribbon is a toxic blossom of images that burn into your memory. In pre-World War I Germany, a farm village is beset by accidents that may […]

Continue reading " The White Ribbon "

Starring:
Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin
Review:
People over 50 talking about sex and — yikes! —
having it! Welcome to It’s Complicated, a romcom that
qualifies as a waking nightmare for teens and infantile men whose
definition of “hot” hovers around jailbait. Screw them. (
Peter Travers reviews It’s Complicated in his weekly video
podcast, “At the Movies with […]

Continue reading " It’s Complicated "

Starring:
Rhys Ifans, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Nick Frost, Bill Nighy,
Janua…
Review:
Rock & roll history is being retraced in this appealingly
ramshackle comedy from Love Actually writer-director
Richard Curtis. Set in England circa 1966, the movie revels in the
chaos that ensued when prudes at the BBC decided rock music was an
evil that needed censorship and maybe banning. That?s […]

Continue reading " Pirate Radio "

Starring:
Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Paul Schneider
Review:
What do you say about a 25-year-old British poet who died? If
you’re Jane Campion and the poet is John Keats, you can go with the
love letters Keats (Ben Whishaw) wrote to Fanny Brawne (Abbie
Cornish) before consumption ended his life in Italy in 1821. But
Campion, in films as diverse […]

Continue reading " Bright Star "

Starring:
Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Kristen Wiig
Review:
Right in time for the economic downturn comes Extract,
a smart and potently funny workplace comedy about running a small
business just as small businesses get routinely run into the
ground. Writer-director Mike Judge switches gears from  his
1999 white-collar classic Office Space by sending a little
sympathy to the bossman. That’d be […]

Continue reading " Extract "

Starring:
Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, David James, Mandla Gaduka, William
A…
Review:
Fanboys were orgasmic when producer Peter Jackson previewed
District 9 at July’s Comic-Con in San Diego.
Variety tagged it the “thinking person’s alien movie.” I’m
assuming Transformers 2 is the stupid person’s version.
And since Michael Bay’s attack on the human thought process has
already grossed $380 million in the U.S. […]

Continue reading " District 9 "

Starring:
Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn
Review:
You’ll laugh till it hurts at Cold Souls, a comedy of
shocking gravity starring Paul Giamatti as a neurotic actor named
Paul Giamatti. He is rehearsing Uncle Vanya and feeling
the weight of Chekhov’s Russian sorrow. Then he sees an ad in
The New Yorker: Visit Dr. Flintstein (a serenely crazed
David Strathairn), and your […]

Continue reading " Cold Souls "

Starring:
James Gandolfini, Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander
Review:
Political satire is a bitch to pull off. Kubrick’s Dr.
Strangelove set the bar high in 1964. But damned if In the
Loop doesn’t at least nip at its skirts. Best of all, this
ink-black comedy of war and how to stop worrying and love the spin
is devilishly clever. The gifted […]

Continue reading " In the Loop "