Attack the Block (review)
Take that, Spielberg, with your suburban alien invasions and your gentle parables about acceptance and stuff. Why don’t the aliens ever land in the ’hood, where no one will take their shit sitting down?
coming of age
Rise of the Planet of the Apes movie review: of primate bondage
Jokiness and hokeyness have been genetically engineered away, leaving something pure and sweet and poignant, a throwback to late-60s/early-70s humanist science fiction. More Charly than Heston.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (review)
This is simply a great flick: powerfully emotional, profoundly resonant, scary and funny and intense and wholly enrapturing.
The Tree of Life (review)
Tree of life? Tree of sanctimonious mopey male egotism disguised as a search for meaning, more like. Or a search for God. Or for nostalgia. Or for innocence. Or for Mom. Or for something.
Super 8 movie review: all about Steve
Is it weird that the overwhelming feeling I’m left with after Super 8 is one of a nostalgic melancholy?
X-Men: First Class (review)
“Best. Comic Book Movie. Evah!” So my inner fangirl is screaming at the moment as she does a little happy Snoopy dance.
Take Me Home Tonight (review)
Hey, I love Duran Duran, too, but 80s nostalgia as a thing is so ten years ago… just about the time that the 33-year-old Topher Grace would have been the right age to play the just-out-of-college, I-dunno-what-to-do-with-myself whiner he plays here…
Hanna (review)
Joe Wright makes sure his story looks great — and sounds great, with its aurally spectacular Chemical Brothers score — but it’s an empty experience, a Frankenstein story with no heft, indeed with little apparent awareness of the classic tale it is evolved from.
William & Kate (review)
If you’re gonna do a WB-esque royal-wedding cash-in movie, you have to give it a fair shot. Where is the dream sequence? I fully expected to see Kate go all Buffy on some shuffling hoards of zombie paparazzi. But it’s nowhere to be found in William & Kate. How mysterious.
Miral (review)
What could possibly be offensive about artist-filmmaker Julian Schnabel taking on an underdog tale and imbuing it with his usual warm, empathetic, humanist touch? Ah, here is Schnabel’s mistake: his story is about a Palestinian girl, and he fails to give equal time to the Israeli side of the story, an unforgivable transgression in the eyes of many. That said…
