AltWeeklies Wire
The Oscar-Winning 'Departures' Is Good, but Not That Goodnew
While moving and carefully done, Departures is hardly revelatory -- it sticks to tear-jerking iterations on circle-of-life themes. As the Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film, the film's greatest profundity reveals more about the questionable decisions being made by the Academy than those of love, death, or life.
The Portland Mercury |
Marjorie Skinner |
07-02-2009 |
Reviews
'Public Enemies' is Less a Biopic Than a Glossy, Stylish Elegynew
What keeps Public Enemies from being a masterpiece is a peculiar lack of emotional accessibility to the key characters.
Jennifer Lynch Steps Up -- Cruelly -- With 'Surveillance'new
With this Jennifer Lynch starts to be interesting on her own -- even more since her already-wrapped next, Hisss, is an India-shot horror fantasy based on local mythology. Which, at last, is a project one can't even imagine David Lynch doing.
San Francisco Bay Guardian |
Dennis Harvey |
07-01-2009 |
Reviews
This Year's Rock Documentaries Are Funny, Moving, Exciting and Tragicnew
This year's crop of rock docs bring us talkes about Arthur Russell, the Monks, the '80s New Haven punk scene, the Hold Steady and Scott Walker.
New Haven Advocate |
John Adamian, Christopher Arnott and Brianna Snyder |
06-30-2009 |
Movies
'Year One': Sub-Zeronew
Slayer was right: God hates us all. How else to explain this blasphemously asinine and crudely scatological buddy pic?
Austin Chronicle |
Marc Savlov |
06-26-2009 |
Reviews
The Latest 'Transformers' Ups the Ante on Big and Dumbnew
Revenge of the Fallen might not be louder than its predecessor, but it's assuredly "noisier" in the sense that the film is a clanging, full-metal racket from start to finish, with only the rare narrative pause for dramatic scenes devoted to exclusively human interactions.
Austin Chronicle |
Marjorie Baumgarten |
06-26-2009 |
Reviews
'My Sister's Keeper': A Three-Hankie Circusnew
Unsubtleties be damned, our defenses fall, and Nick Cassavetes' reign as the go-to waterworks man remains uncontested.
Austin Chronicle |
Kimberley Jones |
06-26-2009 |
Reviews
'Food, Inc.': Appetite Suppressantnew
Doomsday opening aside, Food, Inc. largely forgoes bombast, but you don't need the pictures to get the drift here, which is, more or less, that the American food industry is pretty much fucked.
Austin Chronicle |
Kimberley Jones |
06-26-2009 |
Reviews
'Cheri' is Quite a Monument to Michelle Pfeiffernew
This is sensual, cerebral, and surprisingly weighty stuff, which should come as no surprise to anyone who's been following the careers of Stephen Frears, critically neglected, perhaps, because he's so hard to pin down.
Austin Chronicle |
Kimberley Jones |
06-26-2009 |
Reviews
'Burma VJ' is a Journalistic Masterpiecenew
This gripping doc makes an airtight argument for the absolute necessity of a free press, and it should be required viewing for anyone thinking of becoming any kind of journalist.
Austin Chronicle |
Marc Savlov |
06-26-2009 |
Reviews
'Every Little Step' Is a Life-Affirming Look at Performancenew
Every Little Step, the absorbing documentary about the 2006 revival of the Broadway hit A Chorus Line — in other words, a movie about the casting of a musical that's about actors auditioning for a musical — is a rabbit hole well worth tumbling down.
The Memphis Flyer |
Addison Engelking |
06-26-2009 |
Reviews
Tedious Exposition Slows Michael Bay and His Toys in the 'Transformers' Sequelnew
Everything is bigger, bolder and badder in Revenge of the Fallen, and if it weren't for the endless, clumsily delivered exposition, the film would work like gangbusters as the ultimate garish escapism.
Orlando Weekly |
Justin Strout |
06-25-2009 |
Reviews
'Cheri' Works as a Wax Museum of Genresnew
It takes a prim-and-properness that few Americans can fathom to make an R-rated film about a hooker and her lover and not display heaps of sweat-covered skin, but that's the headspace that master Stephen Frears inhabits in Cheri.
Orlando Weekly |
Justin Strout |
06-25-2009 |
Reviews
'Away We Go' Is Chicken Soup for the Hipster Soulnew
Away We Go is an unequivocal triumph for Sam Mendes, above all else because the honest moment he uncovers amidst this series of vignettes packs a wallop.
Orlando Weekly |
Justin Strout |
06-25-2009 |
Reviews
'The Room' Takes Up Residence in Little Rocknew
If Levi Agee has his way, the melodrama-turned-cult-hit The Room will screen indefinitely in Little Rock.
Arkansas Times |
Lindsey Millar |
06-25-2009 |
Movies
