Adam (review)
Perhaps it’s a little bit of victory, in an odd way, that this too-earnest, underemotional drama so perfectly apes its protagonist in how it cannot quite connect with anyone outside itself.
2009 theatrical releases
The Cove (review)
Think ‘guerrilla journalism.’
Funny People (review)
Tears of a Clown Oh, people are gonna hate this movie. Look, the jokes are not jokes in Funny People. The humorous-sounding bits of dialogue are not intended to make you laugh so much as they are intended to make you wonder why the characters uttering them are trying to make those around them laugh. … more…
The Ugly Truth (review)
I’m trying to figure out when ‘romantic comedies’ turned into ‘let’s throw two really despicable and unpleasant people together in the first act so they can hate on each other through the second act until they magically fall in love in the third act.’
Orphan movie review: John + Kate plus hate
Oh, how I wish this was a knowing parody, not an unwitting one. All the overbaked tropes of the genre are deployed: the “scary” music, the “menacing” camera angles, the telegraphing every boo.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (review)
So, is this the fourth Harry Potter movie, or the fifth? It’s the sixth? Really, already? Ah, that’s the one where Harry goes to the magic school, which has yet another new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, right? And Harry fights the evil wizard?
I Love You, Beth Cooper (review)
Though he’s never so much as spoken to the poor girl before, nerd announces during his high-school valedictorian speech that he ‘loves’ the ‘hottest’ girl in school. In the real world, this would be called an act of passive-aggressive behavior by an antisocial creep…
Bruno (review)
How far should we be expected to dumb down movies?
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (review)
This is how far cartoons have descended in the last decade and a half: *The Lion King* was Shakespearean. *Ice Age* is *Everybody Loves Raymond*ean.
Public Enemies (review)
I’m wildly intrigued by *Public Enemies* even though I readily concede that character development is all but nonexistent, and that it leaves me more wanting to know who notorious bank robber John Dillinger was than I did before I went into the film.
