Betsy Sharkey, Film Critic

November 25, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'The Princess and the Frog'

Go ahead and pucker up. Because long before "The Princess and the Frog" is over you'll want to smooch the charming couple, air kiss a romantic firefly and hug a voodoo queen in this foot-stomping, smile-inducing, heart-warming animated twist on the old Brothers Grimm frog-prince fairy tale.

November 25, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Guess who upstages 'Me and Orson Welles'?

"Me and Orson Welles" is a frothy backstage pass, courtesy of director Richard Linklater, to the early days of the great director (that would be Welles) during a stint as the mercurial head of the Mercury Theater Company in 1937.

November 20, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

'The Blind Side'

Watching "The Blind Side" is like watching your favorite football team; you'll cheer when things go well, curse when they don't, and be reminded that in football, as in life, it's how you play the game that counts -- though winning doesn't hurt, either.

November 20, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

'The Messenger'

For too long, life for Army Staff Sgt. Will Montgomery has been all about death. On the Iraqi frontline where he's been, he and his buddies just wanted to cheat it and survive. Now he's back home with only a few months left in his tour of duty, only to find himself surrounded by it once again.

November 20, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans'

Cold-blooded reptiles are lurking everywhere in the slick new noir "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans," with snakes, iguanas, gators and especially Nicolas Cage at their slithering and cynical best.

November 13, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

'Pirate Radio'

"Pirate Radio," the new rock-saturated comedy that proves life really is better when it's set to a '60s soundtrack, is, to borrow from the Stones, "a gas! gas! gas!"

November 9, 2009

ON FILM

The Cold War's greatest hits

Did you ever think you might actually miss the Cold War? Feel a twinge of nostalgia for a time when we knew exactly who our enemies were? Yearn for those glory days when we didn't question whether we were the good guys, even if we should have?

November 6, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

'The Box'

Have you ever actually tried watching paint dry? A sloth walk? Grass grow? You can have all the "thrills" with none of the chills courtesy of "The Box," the painfully sluggish new sci-fi morality play from "Donnie Darko" creator Richard Kelly.

November 6, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

'Precious' cuts deep

Nothing quite prepares you for the rough-cut diamond that is "Precious." A rare blend of pure entertainment and dark social commentary, this shockingly raw, surprisingly irreverent and absolutely unforgettable story of an obese, illiterate, pregnant black Harlem teen circa 1987 is one that you hope will not be dismissed as too difficult, because it should not be missed.

November 6, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Robert Zemeckis' 'Christmas Carol': Bah humbug. Too many special effects

Have you ever wanted to strangle a ghost?

October 30, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

'Skin'

There is a pivotal scene in "Skin," a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story plucked out of the mess of South Africa's apartheid, when young Sandra Laing's father shouts the good news to the family -- "She's white again." Surreal and ironic, the moment captures the sensibility of this ambitious if sometimes uneven indie film with its eye always on the larger issues of race to be found within one unusual life.

November 1, 2009

ON FILM

New films are on the serious side

I don't know if you've noticed, but as a nation we've become a very grumpy and discontented bunch. Consumer confidence continues to waver while our anger index (yes, we have one of those) is on the rise. In a world undone, with issues piling up like unread New Yorkers -- unemployment, foreclosures, bank failures, healthcare to name a few -- we've turned into a seething mass on our way to a collective "Network"-style "I'm mad as hell" meltdown.

September 25, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'Fame'

"Fame," it turns out, is not going to live forever. It's officially DOA.

11:44 AM PDT, September 9, 2009

AN APPRECIATION

Army Archerd, gatekeeper of a bygone Hollywood era

I only met Army Archerd once, but long before that brief handshake, the grip softened by age, a gentle smile and a few kind words, I knew him.

July 31, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'Funny People'

"Funny People" was supposed to be Judd Apatow's coming out party. The movie in which "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" writer-director, who has long made his bread and butter on the back of immature guys and their raunchy talk, shows his grown-up side.

April 10, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'The Song of Sparrows'

"The Song of Sparrows" is a fitting name for the new film from Iranian writer-director Majid Majidi. Sparrows are, after all, the most ordinary of birds: small, brown, common. The overlooked and the ordinary is exactly the terrain Majidi loves to walk, and we see again in this film his deep affection for his country's common folk -- with their meager resources, menial jobs and yet surprisingly fulfilled lives.

April 3, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'Alien Trespass'

There is a sweet sincerity to "Alien Trespass," a sometimes too reverential homage to the sci-fi B-movies that landed in theaters during the 1950s, channeling our nuclear annihilation worries through an even greater prism of fear: the outer reaches of the universe and the frightening beings that might exist there.

April 3, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'Bart Got a Room'

The mysterious Bart and the mythology of the senior prom as the defining moment in the life of a teenager are the unseen specters hovering over the slight comedy "Bart Got a Room."

March 20, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'Sin Nombre'

There is much strange beauty in the poverty and desperation captured by "Sin Nombre," an evocative and impressive first feature from writer-director Cary Joji Fukunaga tracing both the journey north taken by so many from Mexico and Central America and the gang violence that stunts the lives of the many others who stay behind.

March 13, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'The Secrets'

In "The Secrets," filmmaker Avi Nesher takes us into the emotional heart of young Israeli women struggling to mesh their emerging identities with an ultra-orthodox Jewish world where the glass ceiling tops out at marriage and children.

March 6, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'An American Affair'

Love affairs with married men are always messy, entangling more people in the web of fictions than you'd ever imagine. When the man in question is President Kennedy, circa 1963, the Cuban missile crisis under his belt and reelection in his sights, well, things are just bound to get seriously complicated.

February 13, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'Two Lovers'

Set during a gray Brighton Beach winter, "Two Lovers" begins with the solid shape of Joaquin Phoenix lumbering down a pier, a bag of dry cleaning slung over his shoulder. We don't know who he is or anything about him, really, but for the heavy resignation and hopelessness that saturate his every step. There is no hesitation as he makes his way up and over the railing, jumping into the frigid bay below. But submerged deep in the icy waters, he discovers that he is not yet ready to die.

February 15, 2009

OSCARS

Appreciating the supporting nominees

In looking at the Oscar category of best supporting actor and actress, I'm reminded of the sort of delicious dinner party that lingers in your memory years later. Although presumably you accept the invitation because you have some affection for the host, it is the unexpected alchemy of possibilities created by those on the guest list that heighten anticipation of the event.

February 6, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'Crips and Bloods: Made in America'

The image of a glittering downtown Los Angeles skyline turned upside down, which opens Stacy Peralta's sobering "Crips and Bloods: Made in America," is both striking and unnerving. With that image, Peralta telegraphs a theme that will resonate in chilling ways throughout his new documentary -- that geography matters and that we are heading into a world that's been upended.

January 16, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'Notorious'

There are many things that can be said about Biggie Smalls, the rapper officially known as the Notorious B.I.G., who was gunned down in a hail of bullets on Wilshire Boulevard in 1997 when he was just 24. But the one that fits best on his massive frame is a slight one: flow. ¶ Flow was there in his rhymes, a hypnotic seduction of words weaving and teasing around you like the perpetual haze trailing from his blunts. It was there in the deep rumble of his voice, in the slow, liquid roll of his body as he moved. And it is there in Jamal Woolard, the young rapper who plays him in "Notorious," a performance that goes a long way toward saving a movie that has fallen obsessively in love with its subject. ¶ Mad, blind love is always a hazard in films that fashion themselves as biographies. No detail of a life too small, no moment left behind. In "Notorious," director George Tillman Jr. and screenwriters Reggie Rock Bythewood and Cheo Hodari Coker have fallen right into the pit alongside so many who have come before them.

January 16, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'Hotel for Dogs'

Think of "Hotel for Dogs" as a sort of "Mission: Impossible" with canines . . . without Tom Cruise, or the international intrigue, or those scary, slice-you-up-into-little-bits bad guys. What it is packed with is lots of sneaking around, very cool gadgets, excellent stunts and some clever kids, though not in the precocious, all-adults-are-stupid way.