Source Code (review)
If you haven’t already seen 2009’s Moon, I beg you to do so before you see Source Code, which will put you off director Duncan Jones, which wouldn’t be fair to you, to Jones, or to Moon.
drama
The Eagle (review)
Lunkhead Channing Tatum as a soldier in Roman-era Britain? Must be processed Hollywood cheese, and hence hootingly entertaining, right? But Tatum acquits himself admirably here, in a film that clearly intends to ensure Hollywood cheese is the last thing that comes to mind…
The Lincoln Lawyer (review)
Josh Lucas and Matthew McConaughey have never actually appeared onscreen together before. It had been entirely possible, up till this moment, that they were the same person, in a Jekyll-and-Hyde sort of way. Would this be how the universe ends, with parallel-universe versions of the same actor causing all of infinity to collapse into some hellish singularity?
Limitless (review)
It’s total utter complete fantasy of the best stripe, and just the kind that plugs into an ambitious but procrastinating brain. What if I could write my novel and make a million on the stock market and learn Japanese without even breaking a sweat? What else would I do? The what-if, as it turns out, is not all that, so much.
The Tempest (review)
There’s a little bit of Hammer horror in Julie Taymor’s messy but thrilling adaptation of Shakespeare’s last play, and there’s more than a little turning-of-the-tables, all of which brings a new perspective on the play, and a new appreciation for it, which is the best we can ask for the umpteenth adaptation of a centuries-old work.
The Adjustment Bureau (review)
It keeps us on our intellectual and emotional toes as it blithely bounces us around thorny philosophical koans and lets us peek behind the scenes of the universe at the charming puppetmasters who pull the strings. But for the heaviness of the film’s metaphysics, there is something ineffably light and charming about it. If Frank Capra made The Matrix, it would be The Adjustment Bureau.
The King’s Speech (review)
When Colin Firth wins the Oscar for Best Actor in a few hours for this role, it will be one of the rare happy concurrences of the actual best performance of the year being recognized by the industry’s highest honor as such.
Animal Kingdom (review)
This electrifying Australian crime drama sears all hint of the sentimental out of a harrowing tale of one Melbourne family’s felonious downfall, and — daringly — strips all sense of cinematic romance out of a genre that often idealizes the corrupt and the brutal.
I Am Number Four (review)
High school is hard. High school is even harder when you’re a secret alien from another planet in hiding from big scary guys with enormous feet and weird tattoos on their bald heads who are after you for reasons no one really understands. Except maybe that you’re the last of your kind. Well, apart from your alien-warrior protector, who isn’t specially numbered like you are.
Vanishing on 7th Street (review)
The ambiguity of it all is at least as frustrating as it is intriguing, but director Brad Anderson whips it into something gorgeously terrifying, creating a sense of menace out of shadow and darkness the likes of which I’m not sure I’ve ever seen on film before.
