Cyrano movie review: out of tune
Peter Dinklage is wonderful, but this feels like a suggestion of a movie, not an actual one. It’s not romantic; there’s no humor, no absurdity. Its unpleasantness is as puzzling as it is inescapable.
Joe Wright
Darkest Hour movie review: a surrender to open-and-shut history
A feature-length Oscar clip, two hours of Gary Oldman stomping around in a Winston Churchill suit. There’s too little drama and too much inevitability in what amounts to a reanimated Madame Tussaud’s waxwork scene.
Pan movie review: a disaster of fantastically epic proportions
An embarrassingly empty pastiche of numerous beloved action blockbusters, all frenetic action and soulless mishmashes of fantasy imagery.
Anna Karenina (review)
There is no pretense that we’re getting a realistic depiction of late-19th-century Russia. Director Joe Wright isn’t merely crafting a metaphor about the social structures under which we all live: he’s underscoring the artificiality of cinema itself.
Anna Karenina (trailer)
Joe Wright. Keira Knightley. I have high hopes for this one.
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.
royal wedding hype; ‘Hanna’s Joe Wright says ‘Sucker Punch’ is sexist; dear god no, there’s gonna be another ‘Tron’ flick; more: leftover links
Plus: Should Hollywood stop pandering to dorks? Does the flopping of Mars Needs Moms spell the end of 3D? Why is Katie Holmes failing to charm America?
trailer break: ‘Hanna’
An action fantasy movie about a girl? Awesome. More like this, please.
top 10 movies of 2009: the whys and wherefores
If you regularly check my on-the-fly ranking of new theatrical releases as I see them, then my top 10 movies of 2009 are no surprise: I shuffled a few titles around a bit last month, but the films ranked in the top 10 for 2009 haven’t changed much in months. (The 2009 ranking is here; … more…
Bright Star movie review: cinematic poetry
John Keats is the intruder in Fanny Brawne’s story, and you might be forgiven for assuming that she’s the one who became legendary, for how the film defies convention by lavishing its focus on her.
