AltWeeklies Wire
'Cloverfield''s 9/11 Infelicitiesnew
Last weekend's $46-million top-grosser essentially says that its characters and, by extension, its paying audience, deserves to be killed: New Yorkers, Americans, Abrams' target demographic. I never thought I would see a movie made in the United States that was so gung-ho about 9/11.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
01-23-2008 |
Reviews
Tags: Cloverfield, Matt Reeves
Kicking 'The Bucket List'new
Rob Reiner does something almost unthinkable: he makes Jack Nicholson painful to watch.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
01-09-2008 |
Reviews
Tags: Rob Reiner, The Bucket List
Savage Gracenew
Note-perfect, Tamara Jenkins' The Savages puts all too much American moviemaking to shame.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
12-19-2007 |
Reviews
Tags: Tamara Jenkins, The Savages
$128 Million Later: Will Smith is the Last Movie Star on Earthnew
The exteriors are stunning, and sadly, an insistent, ongoing metaphor for the script's inability to suggest much interior life.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
12-12-2007 |
Reviews
Tags: Francis Lawrence, I Am Legend
The Icy Beauty of 'Atonement'new
There's much to admire in the glassy expanses of this film, yet much that's puzzling as well.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
12-05-2007 |
Reviews
Tags: Atonement, Joe Wright
Crispin Hellion Glover's Strange Nocturnal Emissionsnew
Working with cash banked from playing an eccentric baddie in Charlie's Angels, Glover produced and directed a feature from a perspective no one else would likely ever consider.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
11-28-2007 |
Reviews
Testing the Limits of Artistic Vision in 'Margot'new
Baumbach fifth feature follows in terse, cutting strokes a short-story writer Margot Zeller with teenage son in tow to the wedding of her estranged sister.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
11-21-2007 |
Reviews
The Freewheelin' Todd Haynes' 'I'm Not There'new
Hoping to write about Todd Haynes' new not-a-biopic of Bob Dylan almost feels like trying to write footnotes to footnotes, a circular exercise that would wind even the fabulist likes of Jorge Luis Borges.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
11-14-2007 |
Reviews
Tags: I'm Not There, Todd Haynes
The Coen and Cormac Frontier in 'No Country for Old Men'new
The casting is superb, but the notes each of the actors are allowed to search out and discover are what make No Country For Old Men at least within a well-hurled rock's throw of a "masterpiece" as some writers have already gratefully dubbed this glory of pearlescent carborundum.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
11-07-2007 |
Reviews
What a Gas it is Getting Old With Sidney Lumetnew
Devil is a fantastically sinister thriller with a twining, fucked-up family plot that would be great even if Lumet didn't make it.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
10-31-2007 |
Reviews
The Life Sub-Asian with Wes Andersonnew
Riding the bittersweet comeback, The Darjeeling Limited.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
10-03-2007 |
Reviews
'Eastern Promises' is Audacious in its Simplicitynew
Though David Cronenberg's latest movie is superficially a gangster thriller, it is actually about many things.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
09-12-2007 |
Reviews
Tags: David Cronenberg, Eastern Promises
Instead of 'Delirious,' How About 'Woozy'new
There are positive reviews of Delirious -- they are wrong.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
08-29-2007 |
Reviews
Tags: Delirious, Tom DiCillo
Doughnut Pass Go, Do'h Not Pass 'The Simpsons Movie'new
My keenest, dearest piece of advice: if you want to see it, see it cold, and leave at home the know-it-all who will spurt with laughter at even the gags he or she doesn't understand.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
07-25-2007 |
Reviews
Biding Time with 'The Order of the Phoenix'new
Better than perfunctory, but hardly necessary, the latest Harry Potter film gets Warner Bros.' bottom line from one fiscal year to the other with practical grace.
Chicago Newcity |
Ray Pride |
07-11-2007 |
Reviews
