AltWeeklies Wire
A Forgotten Heist Gets a Welcome Reminder
The Bank Job is a good old-fashioned bank heist movie that's based on a 1971 London robbery in which a Lloyds Bank vault was emptied while the city slept.
Tags: Roger Donaldson, The Bank Job
Will Farrell Takes Up Old School Basketball
Farrell loiters in the comfort of his signature punch-drunk delivery of outrageous lines and sight gags in a '70s era parody that extends the funk vibe of Judd Apatow's summer comedy Superbad.
Tags: Kent Alterman, Semi-Pro
The Political Thriller Returns With a Vengeance
Director Pete Travis has turned debut screenwriter Barry Levy's Rashomon-inspired script, about an assassination attempt against a U.S. president on a visit to Salamanca into a dizzyingly complex puzzle that sits comfortably next to such great political thrillers as In the Line of Fire.
Tags: Pete Travis, Vantage Point
Philippa Gregory's Novel Gets Shackled
Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson make a handsome, if redundantly costumed, pair of 16th century English sisters in this half-hearted period drama set between King Henry VIII's noble court and his volatile bedroom.
V-Day Movie Shoots a Quiver of Arrows
For a Valentine's Day romantic comedy Definitely, Maybe hits all the right notes of commitment, honesty and maturity that go into a young father's explanation to his daughter about the women he dated before she was conceived.
Tags: Adam Brooks, Definitely, Maybe
Laughing Abstract: Farrell and Gleeson Get Dark in Inky Black Comedy
“In Bruges” (pronounced ‘brooj’) is a highly unique and stylized black comedy that makes good on its ostensibly simple hitmen/boss narrative trope.
Tags: In Bruges, Martin McDonagh
How to Avoid Bad Movies
There are some clues you can look for to help limit your exposure to crappy films. While this condensed list won't insure that you never spend another two hours in a darkened cinema bored to tears, it does represent some shortcuts that I use as a critic in deciding which movies to avoid.
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
The Best Films of 2007
Every year film critics love to bemoan what a lousy lot of movies the previous twelve months have wrought as if the art of filmmaking were hitting an all time low. However 2007 was a tremendous year for high quality movies that elevated the craft.
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
Accidentially Camp Thriller Begs for Audience Participation
This sublimely awful suspense thriller is especially enjoyable for the wildly varied collection of talent taking one for the team.
Tags: Awake, Joby Harold
