AltWeeklies Wire
Hero Worshipnew
A soldier’s tragic tale retold for maximum effect in 'The Tillman Story.'
New York Press |
Armond White |
08-19-2010 |
Reviews
Basking In Basquiatnew
'The Radiant Child' is a glowing tribute to the late artist.
New York Press |
Dale W. Eisinger |
07-22-2010 |
Reviews
Catherine Breillat Returns With Another Powerful Sexual Narrativenew
That drop of menstrual blood at the beginning of The Runaways recurs in Bluebeard, Catherine Breillat’s adaptation of the 17th-century Charles Perrault fairytale.
New York Press |
Armond White |
03-25-2010 |
Reviews
Tags: Bluebeard, Catherine Breillat
Eisner Doesn't Try For Symbolism and His Reboot is Better For Itnew
Breck Eisner’s remake of George Romero’s The Crazies is one of those movies dishonest critics use for target practice. It has no big names or budget that they feel compelled to respect and so disrespect inspires them to ignore its visual wit and skillful pacing.
New York Press |
Armond White |
03-04-2010 |
Reviews
Tags: The Crazies, Breck Eisner
Landmark Film is an Answer to the Age of Snarknew
Dealing with Davy Mitchell’s rush to maturity makes Easier With Practice more than a story about a young man obsessed with a phone-sex relationship. Davy’s dilemma captures a classic emotional uncertainty many people know but that most movies avoid. It features a true shock of recognition.
New York Press |
Armond White |
02-25-2010 |
Reviews
André Téchiné Explores Difficult Emotional Territory With Exquisite Detailnew
America may not be ready for André Téchiné’s superb new movie The Girl on the Train. To judge by the audience’s gasp at the film’s Lincoln Center world premiere last year, Téchiné’s signature interest in how race, class and sex intersect remains shocking.
New York Press |
Armond White |
01-21-2010 |
Reviews
The Princess and the Frog Doesn't Bring Changenew
Hyped as offering the Walt Disney corporation's first African-American animated heroine, The Princess and the Frog actually refrains from expanding our social imagination.
New York Press |
Armond White |
12-04-2009 |
Reviews
'Gentlemen Broncos' is a Personal, Daring Film That Captures Eccentric Americananew
Treading that thin line between empathy and pity that also distinguished Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, Hess deals with the oddball aspirations frequently felt by teenage loners who escape into the fantasy worlds of sci-fi.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-29-2009 |
Reviews
Tags: Gentlemen Broncos, Jared Hess
Michael Jackson's Genius is Brought Closer and Clarified in 'This Is It'new
Behind the tabloid image, Jackson's seen thinking, devising, improvising -- and performing masterfully. At age 50, Jackson was still a prodigy; possessed of protean talent and when in the company of collaborators he is inspired.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-29-2009 |
Reviews
Spike Jonze Turns Maurice Sendak's Classic Children's Book into an Adult Work of Artnew
Jonze's sensibility is an authentic development of the music-video era's generational split -- which is also an aesthetic split. He doesn't exploit pop rebellion but has a counter-intuitive slant on what's funny, sad, universal.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-15-2009 |
Reviews
Chris Rock Never Embraces the Nap in His Doc About African-American Hairnew
Good Hair is a mockumentary by accident because Rock pretends to explore the cultural phenomenon of how black women truly feel about their hair. Yet he relentlessly falls back on easy jokes and juvenile asides that mock the subject.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-08-2009 |
Reviews
Ricky Gervais Lands in Cloudcuckooland With 'Invention of Lying'new
Ricky Gervais, the film's star and co-writer/co-director, doesn't do philosophical scrutiny or hermeneutic analysis; he merely undermines religion using the glib condescension of Hollywood leftists who assume the only people who still believe in God live in fly-over America. A hostile new trend has begun.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-01-2009 |
Reviews
The Coen Brothers Clarify Their Jewishness -- Without Guiltnew
The Coens admit their own Jewishness the way their best recent films admit Americanness: with genuine feeling for the complexities, abundance and absurd conventions that give us our identity.
New York Press |
Armond White |
10-01-2009 |
Reviews
Tucker Max Wants You to Like Him for Being an Unapologetic Dickheadnew
The film adaptation of Max's notoriously infantile and incredibly popular tell-all memoir about his fratboy sexcapades is not immediately repugnant. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell only becomes truly insipid when it makes a cloying, half-hearted attempt to show that Max and his buddies have learned the error of their ways and now have greater respect for women and themselves.
New York Press |
Simon Abrams |
09-24-2009 |
Reviews
Mumblecore King Henry Jaglom Returns With 'Irene in Time'new
If Jaglom was a trustfunded neophyte, he'd be acclaimed the King of Mumblecore -- a genre that, it turns out, he pioneered several decades ago.
New York Press |
Armond White |
09-24-2009 |
Reviews
