AltWeeklies Wire
Public Culpability Gets Credit for Torture
2008 gets its first installment of torture porn with a predictable thriller that blames a bloodthirsty public and big media for fostering an atmosphere of retribution violence.
Tags: Gregory Hoblit, Untraceable
Wedding Crapper: Rom Com Coffin Gets Another Nail
Agonizing, flaccid, and about as romantic as bottle of flat champagne “27 Dresses” is a perfect example of the stereotypical Hollywood romantic comedies that Judd Apatow’s “40 Year Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up” successfully disemboweled.
Tags: 27 Dresses, Anne Fletcher
Hollywood Kicks Off 2008 With a Walloping Dud
Ed Burns entrenches himself as Hollywood's go-to-B-movie actor with an excruciatingly dull remake of a Japanese horror movie that, like every other American attempt at translating the genre, fails from the start.
Tags: Eric Valette, One Missed Call
The Prosthetic Achievement: Oil is Sweeter Than Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson has grown immensely as a writer/director since his last picture (Punch Drunk Love), so much so that in a single film he has become America's most visionary and accomplished modern-day auteur.
Barren Sci-fi Horror Bites the Hand That Wrote it
Director Francis Lawrence was clearly not the best choice to helm the latest adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 classic sci-fi/horror blender that spawned The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man.
Tags: Francis Lawrence, I Am Legend
Going South: 'His Dark Materials' Sink
The hullabaloo surrounding any "anti-religious" theme to Philip Pullman's 1995 His Dark Materials trilogy (the title is taken from Milton's Paradise Lost) takes a distant backseat to screenwriter/director Chris Weitz's spotty filmic adaptation that never locates a throughline to the convoluted narrative.
Tags: Chris Weitz, The Golden Compass
Darabont Turns King Novella into Instant-Classic Horror Picture
It took director Frank Darabont writing a better ending for Stephen King's 1980 novella before he could tackle making the best legitimate horror movie to come out in years.
'Lions for Lambs' is Years Behind the Times
Overtly pedantic and overstrained, Tom Cruise's first undertaking as co-head of United Artists is a politically top-heavy triptych of simultaneous political conversations made all the more cumbersome due to its extravagant cast.
Tags: Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford
The Coen Brothers Go West
After a string of disappointing projects, Joel and Ethan Coen have hit cinematic paydirt with Cormac McCarthy's 2003 western crime novel No Country for Old Men.
'Rails & Ties' is Too Predictable
Alison Eastwood makes a tentative directorial debut with a made-for-TV-quality script by tin-eared Mickey Levy.
Tags: Alison Eastwood, Rails & Ties
'Gone Baby Gone' Feels Like Two Narratives Pasted Together
For his directing debut Ben Affleck adapts a Dennis Lehane novel that resists being converted into the usual three-act structure like a circle being jammed into a square.
Tags: Ben Affleck, Gone Baby Gone
'Wristcutters: A Love Story' is Wretched
This film takes such an arch tone by tacitly endorsing suicide that it spends most of its time in narrative freefall.
The Future of Joe Strummer on Film
Julien Temple, the director of the notable Sex Pistols documentary Filth and the Fury, proves he's the right man to make a documentary about the Clash's late frontman.
'Lars and the Real Girl' is Surprisingly Touching
Screenwriter Nancy Oliver has crafted a romantic story about a lonely introvert who discovers an ad hoc method of self-therapy in the guise of an anatomically correct silicone love doll.
'Martian Child' is a New Magical Realist Film
It focuses on the primal fear of abandonment of a young orphaned boy named Dennis (Bobby Coleman) who professes to be from Mars.
Tags: Martian Child, Menno Meyjes
