AltWeeklies Wire
Gaming the Viewernew
Why would you want to watch a film about a couple and their young son held prisoner and tortured by a pair of bullying psychopaths?
Tags: Funny Games, Michael Haneke
Let's Hope Real Comedy Comes into Playnew
You know how most DVDs come with extra features about the making of movie, interviews with the stars and the director, and whatever else was captured on film that fans might find moderately interesting? They seem to have got it backward here.
Did Romance Exist Before Movies?new
Hollywood perfected it with sophisticated women and beautiful men trading witty dialogue while overcoming artificial obstacles to the kind of rapturous love that only had to last until the words "The End" left us to imagine that they could keep it up for the ensuing lifetimes.
The Art of Lyingnew
Much of the critical response to the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement, has focused on the film's epic scope and the intensely but tragically romantic story it tells. There has even been some comparison with James Cameron's Titanic.
Tags: Atonement, Joe Wright
'Charlie Wilson's War': Mr. Wilson's World Ordernew
Well, finally the American film industry has done it. At last, there's a movie about American foreign policies and programs in the Middle East and West Asia, in Iraq and Afghanistan, that Americans can feel good about.
Tags: Mike Nichols, Charlie Wilson's War
'Lions for Lambs': From a Lofty Liberal Lecternnew
Dramatic is a quality that Lions never comes close to achieving. It's a ponderous creation of sentimental high-mindedness and stilted evasiveness.
Tags: Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford
'The Darjeeling Limited': The Disorienting Expressnew
This is probably the most striking, and perhaps the most memorable, of Wes Anderson's five films. This doesn't mean that it's the best, or even that it's good.
'Gone Baby Gone': Right and Wrongnew
Some of the music in the film is a bit on the maudlin side -- and that's the only bad thing I have to say about it.
Tags: Ben Affleck, Gone Baby Gone
Tony Gilroy's Power of Attorneynew
Gilroy is a veteran screenwriter (the Bourne movies) making his directorial debut, and there may be an interesting irony in the results: He seems to have been more successful in his new role than in his scripting job.
Tags: Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy
Paul Haggis Over-reaches with 'In the Valley of Elah'new
While he hasn’t resorted to the thumping didacticism and patronizing ironies he employed in his Oscar-winning Crash, but In the Valley of Elah isn’t free of too easy point-making.
Tags: Paul Haggis, In the Valley of Elah
'Resurrecting the Champ': Fathers, Sons, & Palookasnew
The film slathers a thick, shiny varnish coat of sententiousness and sentiment over its narrative.
Tags: Resurrecting the Champ, Rod Lurie
'The Invasion': Spore Warsnew
Whether or not any new interpretation of this old story could capture anxieties and unconscious fears in our era the way at least two of the previous versions did, this movie isn't up to that challenge.
Tags: The Invasion, Oliver Hirschbieger
'The Simpsons Movie': Underachieving Overachieversnew
It plays like a padded single episode, with a few mild profanities to ensure a PG-13 rating -- I haven't been so disappointed since John Kerry's concession speech.
'Captivity': Bait and Switchnew
A good movie should have something for everyone: this one has nothing for anyone.
Tags: captivity, Roland Joffe
Mad About the Boynew
Notes is a very clever film, but in a curious way, smaller than the novel.
Tags: Notes on a Scandal, Richard Eyre
