Charlie Wilson’s War (review)
It’s one of those “fundamental interconnectedness of all things” things. Or a good-news, bad-news joke. Or an admonition to be careful what you wish for.
based on a book
The Mist movie review: we have met the monsters…
Frank Darabont’s adaptations of Stephen King’s writings are not just some of the best mountings of the writer’s work but some of the best films, period, of recent years. So I don’t think it’s too outrageous — or too surprising — to say that ‘The Mist’ is not only one of the best movies of 2007, it’s one of the best horror movies ever made. Period.
No Country for Old Men (review)
Here’s the thing about Joel and Ethan Coen: they can make anything, absolutely anything, intensely profound and deeply weird — and weirdly deep — and cruelly magnificent all at the same time.
Gone Baby Gone (review)
It’s no rare thing that a film gets buzz for its director. It’s a rare thing when that director has never made a film before. It’s an even rarer thing when the film by that first-timer turns out to be as astonishingly confident and shrewd as actor-turned-director Ben Affleck’s *Gone Baby Gone.*
The Jane Austen Book Club movie review: WWJD?
While movies about people clever and engaged enough to enjoy reading for fun may, in theory, be desirable, movies about people *actually reading* are less than totally enthralling.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (review)
Holy shit, but this may be the best straight-up horror movie of the year — I was riveted by the sinister sophistication of it.
Zodiac movie review: killer movie
Fincher rivets us through what could have been an interminable two-hour-and-forty-minute runtime, by daringly jumping through a crime spree that spanned decades with brisk panache, boiling it down into slices of suspense, drama, and fear, with a bit of media criticism thrown in sideways for spice.
Children of Men movie review: a bang and a whimper
There’s so much despair and anger and grief layered just into the background of Alfonso Cuarón’s film that I can’t shake its gray grimness — I’ve been haunted by this film for weeks now…
The Pursuit of Happyness movie review: Mr Smith goes to the Oscars?
I swear, homeless organizations could make a killing just standing around outside the multiplex when showings of Happyness let out and asking for donations to help people like Chris Gardner…
The Prestige movie review: magical mystery tour
The Prestige is a fan-fuckin’-tastic popcorn flick that’s as smart as it is shifty, like some lost Alan Moore graphic novel come to life, like something Jules Verne would have written if he were Neil Gaiman.
