reviews

You know it’s true: A film like *T3* you anticipate with a kind of dread tempered with only a little bit of hope. I mean, come on: It’s Arnie doing the same tired thing yet again and Cameron’s not involved and fer Kyle Reese’s sake, the title needs the tagline built right into it so we know where to orient ourselves in the story.

The most galling thing about *Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle* — and this is an exercise all about the escalation of gall in Hollywood — is that it has the audacity to present itself as ‘A Film by McG.’ Like he’s Orson Welles or something, like some Grand Vision or Theory of Film informs his work, like this is a production that even approaches being worthy of being called an actual, you know, *film,* like it even attempts to pretend to being anything other than what it is, which is a series of incoherent, cheap-looking, badly written, and poorly directed television commercials for itself.

Lori (Eugenia Yuan), who may or may not be sad and lonely, does the nasty with Justin (Matt Westmore), loudly enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, and then goes upstairs to visit with her landlord, Michael (Michael Idemoto), who may or may not be sad and lonely and may or may not be secretly … more…

Art sometimes feels like a matter of life and death to creative people, but this is ridiculous. If Luke Wilson doesn’t write a novel in 30 days, Cuban mobsters will kill him. So he hires Kate Hudson to be his stenographer — the Cuban mobsters destroyed his laptop — and he will dictate the book … more…

I’ve heard tell that there are women who find Paul Bettany positively dreamy. I’m not one of them, but there’s no doubt that his fans will swoon at this enjoyably morose and tragic tale of love and betrayal and tea — it’s Sense and Sensibility, with cheating. In fabulous 1930s England, where everyone dresses for … more…

G’day, mates. Here we have a little triffle from Down Under that wants to be all Hollywood, and does a pretty bang-up job without the big bikkies Hollywood woulda spent but with some damn fine Aussie star power to make up for the lack of moolah. The Twentyman brothers, for whom armed robbery is a … more…

It’s a measure of how far Hollywood has debased itself — and, by extension, the audience — and how literally disgusting movies have become that *Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd* could barely move me to feel anything — not disgust, not anger, not annoyance — except a kind of listless boredom. Oh, I glanced at my watch every 10 hours or so only to discover that mere minutes had passed, but never did it even cross my mind that if I really wanted to leave, no one could stop me.

Dear Harrison, It’s over. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but that’s the way it is. I don’t think you can honestly say that this comes as a surprise — certainly, I’ve been feeling the strain in our relationship for several years now.

Maybe the title is meant to imply something about the incredible lightness of forgiveness or redemption or the washing clean of your soul of bad things. That’s what very earnest movies about gentle ex-cons are usually about, aren’t they? Excessiveness or unseemliness simply won’t do here — frivolity is the enemy of earnestness, and surely there is nothing frivolous and everything earnest about redemption.