Betsy Sharkey, Film Critic
May 18, 2012
'Natural Selection' info
May 25, 2012
Review: A far out trip to the past in 'Men in Black 3'
"Men in Black 3" has got the MIB mojo back — well, most of it anyway. With Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones once again suited up and sporting shades as agents J and K, and a casting coup in Josh Brolin playing K's younger self, the latest alien crisis is good trippy fun as the fate of Earth, and '60s retro style, hang in the balance.
May 25, 2012
Review: Wes Anderson finds near perfect balance in 'Moonrise Kingdom'
It seems fitting that "Moonrise Kingdom,"arguably Wes Anderson's most grown-up film yet, is a warm and funny fable about kids on the cusp.
May 18, 2012
Review: 'Natural Selection' survives with Rachael Harris
"Natural Selection," an intriguing and intelligent first effort from indie filmmaker Robbie Pickering, digs deep into the heart of Texas for its soulful tale of small town saints and sinners and a road trip to redemption.
May 18, 2012
Review: Expect little from 'What to Expect'
"What to Expect When You're Expecting"is essentially the Hallmark card version of the sage, saucy and very specific how-to bestseller by Heidi Murkoff. The movie's sentimental squibs on pregnancy merely skim the surface scratched so thoroughly by the book.
May 11, 2012
Review: Hope springs eternal in 'I Wish'
Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, who has that rare ability to capture the essence of childhood with effervescent sensitivity, has done it again with "I Wish," the story of a family separated by divorce and the two brothers who scheme to bring everyone back together.
May 16, 2012
Movie review: 'The Dictator' rules with crudeness and smarts
Like its creator and star Sacha Baron Cohen, the comedy of "The Dictator" is mercurial to the extreme and as crude as the massive oil reserves of Wadiya, the fictional North African nation where his latest movie prank begins. By turns hysterical, heretical, guilty, innocent, silly, sophisticated, teasing and tedious, the film follows the power-mad leader Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen as he loses his bearings, his beard and his heart in New York City.
May 11, 2012
Review: 'God Bless America' is bloody satire
At times"God Bless America"feels more like an assault weapon than a movie, possibly an AK-47. This funny, sick twist of social satire is certainly locked and loaded, even if its aim is sometimes off.
May 11, 2012
Review: 'Under African Skies' revisits Paul Simon's 'Graceland'
When Paul Simon's seminal album "Graceland" landed in 1986 with its intoxicating African rhythms and critical acclaim, it also came tainted by the apartheid controversy already swirling around it. The excellent new documentary "Under African Skies" comes along like a bridge over those troubled waters, following Simon back to South Africa last summer for a 25-year reunion concert with the musicians who made the album and a sit-down with one of his chief anti-apartheid critics.
May 13, 2012
Critic's Notebook: Is it time to wash out Hollywood's mouth?
At first, the email rants from readers expressing their distress about Hollywood's increasing reliance on foul language were a mere trickle. Like the way one couple lost faith in one of their favorite actors, Paul Rudd, mortified by his graphic pep talk to his private part in"Wanderlust."
May 11, 2012
Review: Jockey biopic 'The Cup' loses its way
"The Cup," the true-life story of jockey Damien Oliver's miracle win atAustralia's2002 Melbourne Cup just a week after the death of his brother, is a tale of heart-wrenching tragedy and uplifting triumph that never quite hits its stride.
May 4, 2012
Movie review: Trying for 'The Perfect Family' and falling short
Earnest and filled with self-doubt, "The Perfect Family,"starring Kathleen Turner, is a darkly comic family drama about the imperfect union between real life and the rigors of Catholic doctrine.
May 4, 2012
Movie review: 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel'
"The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"is an affectionately told comedy about a bunch of English retirees who trade a bleak British future for an elegant retirement hotel in the middle of India, one that promises to make those final years truly golden — and for a fraction of the price at home.
May 5, 2012
Review: 'Conversations at the American Film Institute with the Great Moviemakers'
Filmmakers are natural raconteurs — they have to be — at least when talking about their films. There are the money men who must be convinced to invest, the studios they need to sign on for distribution, the actors they want to hire and the press and public they hope will see the finished film and like it.
April 27, 2012
Movie review: 'Bernie' is murderously charming
"Bernie," a quirky tragi-comedy starring Jack Black as a meticulous mortician, a faithful Methodist, a good neighbor and an improbable murderer, is a true-life Texas tale so perfectly told it seems more like eavesdropping than moviegoing.
April 27, 2012
Review: 'The Raven' has Cusack's Poe swinging like a pendulum
"The Raven"stars John Cusack in a gothic thriller pulled from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe that regrettably falls prey to its grand and grisly ambitions — it's neither grand nor grisly enough to seriously satisfy Poe-ish cravings for murder, mystery and literary allusions.
April 27, 2012
Movie review: 'The Five-Year Engagement' a missed opportunity
The romantic comedy "The Five-Year Engagement," starring Emily Blunt and Jason Segel, tackles the messy business of love in a time when commitment can be career-ending for one of the better halves. Since it is mostly told from a fairly evolved guy's point of view, it sounds so promising, so fresh, you want to root for these kids to get it right — not just the couple, but the filmmakers.
April 29, 2012
Summer Sneaks
Summer movie season offers a brief, brainy break in the action
Year-round schooling. Baby boomers date-nighting. Insatiable appetites DVRing, VODemanding, online streaming. March madness game changing ("Hunger Games," not basketball, $358 million and counting).
April 20, 2012
Movie review: 'Darling Companion' gets rough treatment
Like Freeway, the lovable stray dog at the center of this very teary comedy, "Darling Companion"has lost its way. Even the marquee ensemble anchored by Diane Keaton, Dianne Wiest, Kevin Kline and Richard Jenkins is not enough to rescue this motley mutt of a movie.
4:51 PM PDT, April 12, 2012
Movie review: 'Lockout'
"Lockout" is about a troubled prison in space, starring Guy Pearce as an ex-secret agent all muscled up and throwing as many one-liners as punches. The mission is improbable, the film's logic loosey-goosey, and there are many explosive shortcuts — as in, if it doesn't make sense, just blow it up big time and maybe the audience won't notice. Ah, but they will.
April 20, 2012
Review: 'Chimpanzee' is a kid-friendly swing through nature
"Chimpanzee,"the latest Disney nature film, might as well be called "Simply Irresistible," because thanks to the mischievous monkeyshines of a baby chimp named Oscar, it comes pretty close.
April 20, 2012
Review: 'The Lucky One's' rocky road to love
The sweet but not too syrupy romance of "The Lucky One,"starring a buffed Zac Efron and a blond Taylor Schilling, is about love emerging from the war-ravaged rubble of a young soldier's heart and the unlikely things that save him.
April 1, 2012
Director Edwin in vanguard of Indonesia's new wave of filmmakers
HONG KONG — It's a warm, humid day halfway into the city's International Film Festival, and Edwin — a rising Indonesian indie filmmaker with his single name born of tradition rather than manufactured Hollywood artifice — is trying to explain how he shapes the aesthetic of his films. It all begins with a single image.
April 13, 2012
'The Cabin in the Woods' info
March 9, 2012
Movie review: 'Chico & Rita'
Drawn with a moody artistry, shaded by its Cuban musical roots, "Chico & Rita" is a buttery rich animated tale of love, jazz, showbiz, fame and politics in the late '40s and early '50s that is as catchy as its tunes. This is definitely animation for grown-ups — its look is voluptuous, sexy and sultry; its Latin-inflected Dizzy Gillespie sound is seductive; and its story of young lovers whose passions are tested is timeless.
April 13, 2012
Review: 'The Cabin in the Woods' is Joss Whedon's inside joke
You'd think by now college kids would know better than to head to an isolated cabin deep in the woods for a laid-back weekend of beer, swimming and truth or dare, because… cue spooky music … as everyone knows by now most of them are destined to die, falling to their blood-soaked ends like dominoes: One. By. One.
February 3, 2012
Review: 'Chronicle' is smart about its telekinetic teens
Was it Superman's, Spider-Man's or Socrates' uncle who said, "With great power comes great responsibility?" Regardless, it would have proved sound advice for the suddenly telekinetic teens at the center of the raw, electrical charge of "Chronicle."
April 13, 2012
Review: 'The Three Stooges'
There is an appealing nyuk, nyuk nostalgic spirit to"The Three Stooges."To fully appreciate this paean to slapstick and silly nonsense simply requires that cynicism be temporarily shelved and the thinking side of the brain shut down.
March 9, 2012
Movie review: 'John Carter' doesn't find its footing
The mess that is "John Carter" is signaled early on when our hero finds himself on a strange planet that literally puts a bounce in his step. Why, he could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Instead, John, played with chest-baring kitsch by "Friday Night Lights" Taylor Kitsch, ends up sprawled on his face, eating a lot of dirt.
January 27, 2012
Movie review: 'Declaration of War'
War, by its very nature, doesn't give you weekends or nights off. There may be time between assaults, but the momentary cease-fires are unpredictable at best. So it is in "Declaration of War," a vibrant and heartfelt French film that captures the mood and the memories of young parents who found themselves in the trenches fighting for the life of their child.
February 26, 2012
The Oscars: 'The Descendants' for best picture
Momentous choices accompanied by a ukulele; life-altering decisions made in a Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts and a day-old beard. Simple, honest, real life, right now. Our humanity beautifully rendered in a world where nothing is black and white.
April 7, 2012
Critic's Notebook: China under the influence of American cinema
HONG KONG — A few days ago, an art professor from northern China named Li Xu was in a small Beijing gallery in the shadow of Tiananmen Square explaining the unlikely inspiration for one of his paintings: the $2.7-billion blockbuster "Avatar."
December 23, 2011
Movie review: 'Albert Nobbs'
To say that "Albert Nobbs," starring Glenn Close as a woman passing as a man in 19th century Ireland, is a portrait of conflicted soul doesn't begin to touch the murky depths of the difficult character that is the pale center of this painful-to-watch film.
February 10, 2012
Movie review: 'Bonsai People: The Vision of Muhammad Yunus'
Can a $70 business loan change the life of someone long entrenched in poverty with little education and less hope? And would that loan ever be repaid?
February 17, 2012
Movie review: 'Thin Ice'
"Thin Ice," starring Greg Kinnear, Billy Crudup and Alan Arkin, is a gritty little comedy of the blackest sort about a whacked-out scam that goes down during a frigid Wisconsin winter, where the wind off the lake is cold and the cons are colder still. If you can get past the rough patches — a slightly sluggish start and a coda that feels like one punch line too many — there is some sinister fun to be had in watching Kinnear skating toward disaster on ice that is very thin indeed.
February 10, 2012
Movie review: 'The Vow'
When a movie calls itself "The Vow," you know it takes its love and its relationships seriously. And that's certainly the case with the new romantically and medically challenged weepie starring Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum.
February 24, 2012
Movie review: Wicked case of 'Wanderlust' with Rudd, Aniston
There are so many things to feel guilty about liking in the pure and prurient guilty pleasure that is "Wanderlust." Starring Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston, this is a comedy of no manners about finding your bliss and escaping the modern grind. The laughter is served up naughty and nice, and frequently au naturel, earning it an R rating when perhaps RR (really raunchy) would have been more appropriate.
February 14, 2012
'This Means War' review: Bromance conquers all
It's a hit-and-miss affair as CIA agents/BFFs Chris Pine and Tom Hardy launch highly targeted competing covert love-ops in "This Means War," both aiming for the heart of a consumer products tester played by Reese Witherspoon. Smart, blond, beautiful but unable to get a guy, Witherspoon's Lauren Scott is as perky and perfect as she seems, but this lovely is not what gives the movie its kick.
February 28, 2011
Oscars: Supporting actor Christian Bale
Is there anything Christian Bale can't, or won't, do in service of his art? I swear, if the role called for a 4-foot-tall woman, he'd schedule surgery. Don't even think about how his chilling serial killer in "American Psycho" was constructed.
December 28, 2011
Movie review: 'Pariah'
At its soulful heart, "Pariah" is a stinging street-smart story of an African American teen's struggle to come of age and come out — to the father who still calls her "daddy's little girl" and the mother who quotes the Bible and buys her pink frills.
February 24, 2012
Movie review: 'The Forgiveness of Blood'
"The Forgiveness of Blood," a dark saga about the clash of modern times and ancient traditions in rural Albania, is more a story of whispers when cries are what's called for with lives, livelihoods and family honor on the line.
December 2, 2011
Movie review: 'The Lady'
If "The Lady" is any indication, Luc Besson, the Paris-born filmmaker behind such testosterone-fueled thrillers as "Taken," "Transporter 2" and "The Fifth Element," is having a tough time getting in touch with his feminine side. Yes, there was his recent script for "Colombiana," but at least as portrayed by Zoe Saldana, that was one tough chick.
December 9, 2011
'Young Adult' review: Charlize Theron plays mean to perfection
When it's done right, as it is in "Young Adult," there is something absolutely mesmerizing about watching a train wreck unfold on screen. When the wreck in question is a narcissistic beauty played to scheming, sour, downward-spiraling perfection by Charlize Theron, cringing is definitely called for, but so is laughter.
January 20, 2012
Movie review: 'Miss Bala'
What happens when being in the right place at the right time is also the wrong place at the wrong time? When what saves you could ultimately destroy you? That's the terrifying minefield that the terrific "Miss Bala" navigates in a modern-day Mexico where beauty pageants, politics, police, power and a billion-dollar drug business mingle to deadly effect.
December 23, 2011
Review: 'We Bought a Zoo' is an intelligent family film
In the furry and feathery world of "We Bought a Zoo," starring Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson, basically everything in sight is in need of saving. Thankfully, it has filmmaker Cameron Crowe heading the rescue mission.
September 30, 2011
Movie review: 'What's Your Number?'
Anna Faris is so adorably entertaining that she can say things like — oh, let's see, what can we print here — well, she can say very bad words, which she's often asked to do in films, in fall-down funny and completely forgivable ways. She's got a perpetually sunshiny face that looks as if it's always playing catch-up, there to put the punctuation mark on whatever naughty bit she's just uttered while making the most of that sling-back mouth, those eye-popping baby blues, the nose crinkles (who knew a nose could be played for such comic effect?).
December 30, 2011
Movie review: 'The Iron Lady'
There is far more softness than steel in "The Iron Lady," starring Meryl Streep as the iconic British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The film catches her long after she's left the public eye, and rather than an examination, or an assessment, of her politics, it instead offers up an affecting if not always satisfying portrait of the strong-willed leader humbled by age.
October 7, 2011
Movie Review: 'Real Steel'
"Real Steel" is "Rocky" with robots that look like "Transformers," managed by a "Raging Bull" washout in need of a "Cinderella Man" comeback that's complicated by "The Champ" and "Paper Moon" sorts of parent-child issues, with a sweet bit of "Wall-E"-styled scrap metal who never pulls his punches. Perhaps "Reel Steal" would be the better title.
December 23, 2011
'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' review: Eloquence in loss
"Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" is a handsomely polished, thoughtfully wrapped Hollywood production about the national tragedy of 9/11 that seems to have forever redefined words like unthinkable, unforgivable, catastrophic.
September 9, 2011
Movie review: 'Tanner Hall'
Like detention, "Tanner Hall," the new coming-of-age-in-a-boarding-school drama, allows room for a lot of thinking about other things — its cast most notably, since watching their struggle to move beyond the mundane is painful.
September 30, 2011
Movie review: 'Margaret'
If you know Gerard Hopkins' Victorian-era poem "Spring and Fall," a reflection on the loss of innocence addressed to a young child named Margaret, you have a clue about what writer-director Kenneth Lonergan is getting at in "Margaret." This contemporary lament, starring Anna Paquin, seems partly inspired by the poem, though Hopkins is but one of many literary references scattered about.
September 6, 2011
Critic's Notebook: 'The Help' goes beyond stereotypes
In "The Help's" homespun story of racism in '60s-era Mississippi, some saw stereotypes. I saw pieces of my childhood — for better or worse.
December 23, 2011
Movie review: 'War Horse' is the purest sort of love story
"War Horse," Steven Spielberg's epic family drama about the enduring connection between a boy and his horse and the Great War that tears them apart, has the sweep of a classic John Ford movie, the sentiment of Frank Capra and a spirited steed named Joey who will steal your heart. The film itself, which opens Sunday, is more difficult to love.
December 2, 2011
'Coriolanus' review: Ralph Fiennes directs Shakespeare update
Actor, and now director, Ralph Fiennes has given us war and politics on a grand operatic scale in his ambitious and at times thrilling rendering of one of Shakespeare's lesser known works — "Coriolanus."
November 11, 2011
'London Boulevard': Crime, fame, Colin Farrell not a good mix
"London Boulevard," starring Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley, is a pitch-black thriller with ruthless drug bosses and relentless paparazzi sharing bad guy billing. Would that the movie were pitch perfect as well.
June 17, 2011
Movie Review: 'Mr. Popper's Penguins'
"Mr. Popper's Penguins," a mildly amusing flight of fancy for the family crowd, is far better for its penguins than its Popper. Not that Jim Carrey's Mr. Popper is poorly done, per se. But the penguins are perfectly suited for stealing scenes and hearts as they waddle around and completely take over this farce.
November 8, 2010
An appreciation: Jill Clayburgh
There is a classic Jill Clayburgh scene in Paul Mazursky's "An Unmarried Woman," the 1978 film the actress will be remembered for most in a career that kept her busy with work nearly until her death on Friday. She's walking down a crowded New York City sidewalk having just learned her husband is leaving her for someone half her age, the fresh wound visible only in those eyes, a soft cornflower blue gone stone cold.
November 23, 2011
Movie review: 'My Week With Marilyn'
"My Week With Marilyn," starring Michelle Williams as the blond bombshell, is as mercurial a film as its subject, Marilyn Monroe, was a star. It's lush and vibrant when Williams is onscreen, mostly fussy British discontent when she's not.
12:13 AM PDT, September 17, 2011
Critic's Notebook: Antiheroes rule the screen at Toronto
Reporting from Toronto — The blood was boiling at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, where the movies were dark and brooding, with filmmakers churning up a world of turmoil out of our discontent.
May 6, 2011
Movie review: 'There Be Dragons'
"There Be Dragons," most of which is set during the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s, is supposed to be about the intersecting lives of a saint and a sinner. But it is a third man, a revolutionary, who nearly steals the show. Which might have been all right if writer-director Roland Joffé hadn't been so conflicted about whose story he wants to tell. But indecision can be deadly, and it proves to be here.
September 9, 2011
Movie review: 'Shaolin'
"Shaolin," with its feuding warlords and fighting monks in '20s era China, is a sprawling popcorn blast of action kept spinning with crazy cool kung fu, tons of fake spurting blood (I think everyone had a packet clinched in their teeth) and slacker improvised, or inspired, U.S. subtitles.
August 12, 2011
Movie review: 'Final Destination 5'
This is one of those times when I really wish I could borrow James Earl Jones to do a Darth Vader reading, so you'd get that echo chamber of doom effect. Since I can't, just use your imagination. Ready?
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.
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.
February 11, 2011
Movie review: 'Cold Weather'
"Cold Weather," the latest micro-budget movie from writer-director-editor Aaron Katz, is like an exquisite minimalist painting — its beauty will move you, its simplicity will fool you. For there are layers and complexities to be found in the film, like the many mysteries it slowly exposes.
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.
July 15, 2011
Movie Review: 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan'
In trying to give a modern twist to "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan's" bestselling story of women and friendship in 19th century China, director Wayne Wang has been tripped up by his chick-lit tendencies. He should have trusted that author Lisa See's moving portrait of two girls bound by fate, custom and circumstance (as tightly and at times as painfully as the cloth that wraps and warps their feet) would be enough. Instead, he's weighted down the big-screen version with a couple of 21st century Sex in Shanghai-styled BFFs who've had a nasty falling-out.
February 28, 2011
Oscars: Melissa Leo
What a mother. Hell-to-pay-if-you-cross-her fierce and with more fire in her belly than either of her sons, or certainly that is the way actress Melissa Leo brought Alice Ward to life in David O. Russell's gritty "The Fighter."
March 7, 2011
Book Review: 'Conversations With Scorsese'
Above all else, Martin Scorsese is a character.
July 1, 2011
Movie review: 'Terri'
"Terri," starring newcomer Jacob Wysocki and John C. Reilly, is a lovely lyrical ode to high school misfits and the adults they grow into.
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.
December 22, 2010
Movie review: 'Country Strong'
There is a down-home comfort saturating "Country Strong," in that "somebody done somebody wrong song" way, that almost carries you through when its music-drenched melodrama gets predictable. Which is pretty much as soon as the fragile, still-in-rehab country superstar played by Gwyneth Paltrow starts talking about the baby bird she's found and is trying to save. So like, Scene 2.
March 4, 2011
Movie review: 'Rango'
A marvelous mash-up of Old West and newfangled, "Rango" rewrites the animation playbook with its eye-popping critters and varmints, and its hero's tale (tail?) of a chameleon desperate for a SAG card and a town desperate for a sheriff. What fun.
February 25, 2011
Movie review: 'Vanishing on 7th Street'
Think of "Vanishing on 7th Street," starring Hayden Christensen, John Leguizamo and Thandie Newton, as the apocalypse sneaking in on the down-low.
February 28, 2011
Oscars: Colin Firth gets a well-deserved win for 'The King's Speech'
Learn another language, live in a different body — that's fundamentally what "The King's Speech" required of Colin Firth if he was to give the stammering King George VI an authenticity that could be sensed in every tortured sentence he delivered.
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.
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.
April 29, 2011
Movie Review: 'Fast Five'
Who knew that the best place to put Vin Diesel would be between the Rock and a hard place? The spot has never been tighter, or righter, and the testosterone never higher than in the hot jacking action of "Fast Five."
March 26, 2010
MOVIE REVIEW
'Hot Tub Time Machine': A blast of laughs from the past
Who doesn't have fun in a hot tub? Or hasn't tested, at least once, the more-bodies-more-fun principle?
November 16, 2010
Book review: 'The Elephant to Hollywood' by Michael Caine
Sequels, as anyone schooled in Hollywood knows, are difficult to pull off. The dilemma — how much of the first should find its way into the next? — has confounded many creative minds in this town, so it was probably too much to hope that Michael Caine could beat the odds, though he's made a career of doing just that. "The Elephant to Hollywood," a follow-up to the actor's popular 1992 autobiography, comes lumbering along as more addendum than memoir, more rehash than new dish, but served up with enough warmth and charm that you may be fine with leftovers.
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."
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.
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.
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 27, 2011
Critic's Notebook: Annette Bening takes the ordinary to Oscar-worthy heights
There is a very particular art to playing the ordinary. Few actors do it well — Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney always come to mind. Of those, most fail to get their due come Oscar night — thoughts of Giamatti and Linney rise again.
November 26, 2010
Movie review: 'Nothing Personal'
Everything is personal in the haunting solitude of "Nothing Personal," starring Stephen Rea and Lotte Verbeek in this most unlikely of love stories.
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.
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.
Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
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