Wendy and Lucy (review)
The first great joy of this tart little portrait is Michelle Williams’s achingly contradictory performance as Wendy…
on the road
Bolt (review)
I figured I was probably overthinking this, and should trust that it would all make sense, but I couldn’t help it. I knew that Bolt was about a dog who believes he has superpowers and actually fights crime alongside his beloved person, but he’s wrong because he’s just the canine star of a hit TV action show. I thought, How can a dog look at a green screen and see something that’s not there?
The Happening movie review: nonevent
This appears to be a movie about an incident that occurs to a certain number of people across a particular region consisting of a few states.
3:10 to Yuma (review)
This is inventive and exciting, a grip-the-armrests, hold-your-breath reinvigorating of the Western movie…
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…
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (review)
Sacha Baron Cohen is a genius. A crazy genius, maybe, a man who takes dedication to his art to a level courting criminal prosecution and bodily harm, but a genius nevertheless.
Wolf Creek and Hostel (review)
Bad Things Happen When You Leave the City Well, there goes my dream of driving across Australia. I used to think, Hey, if I’m ever gonna go to all the expense of traveling to the opposite side of the planet, and spend 24 hours on a plane to get there, I’m not gonna go for … more…
The Island (review)
Welcome to *THX 11-Michael Bay*! It’s not a science fiction movie, but an incredible simulation!
Madagascar (review)
‘Ahhhh! Nature! It’s all over me! Get it off!’ screams Melman the urban giraffe once he reaches the titular island in *Madagascar,* and New Yorkers will scream, too, with laughter, because we recognize ourselves in it, and everyone else will scream with laughter because they’ll think it’s making fun of our neuroses. But we like our neuroses just fine, thank you, and appreciate the tribute to them that *Madagascar* is.
Cellular (review)
That’s the kind of flick *Cellular* is: goofily obvious when it isn’t unexpectedly exciting. It’s one of those movies that succeeds partly by not being anywhere near as bad as you were expecting it to be — by being, really, not so bad at all, much to one’s shocked surprise. Seriously, I was anticipating two hours of that annoyingly pseudo-hip Elvis Costello-ish guy from the TV commercials who wanders around saying ‘Can you hear me now?’ into his cell phone — and why o why won’t someone kidnap *him*? — and instead the goofily obvious stuff is more than made up for by the suspense and the humor.
