The Voracious Filmgoer

Don't You Remember You Told Me You Loved Me: THE VOW

2012-02-11T00:15:00.000-05:00

In most Hollywood romances, the ending is obvious: the two biggest stars in the film are going to fall in love. That’s the very nature of the genre. What makes The Vow a somewhat interesting genre exercise is how it starts with the stars in love and takes it all away from them. At the beginning of the film, we meet the central couple already married. They’re just driving away from a movie

Burning Down the House: SAFE HOUSE

2012-02-10T20:03:00.000-05:00

Safe House is a generic studio thriller on a preordained course to exactly where you think it’s going. That it managed to hold my attention for as long as it did is some small miracle. It’s a trust-no-one spy movie shot in quick cut chaos style with the kind of grainy, high-contrast look that’s become the stylistic shorthand for post-9/11 thrillers. There are few surprises to be found within

More Than a Woman: THE WOMAN IN BLACK

2012-02-09T16:40:00.000-05:00

There’s a big, scary haunted house in the middle of The Woman in Black, a charmingly old-fashioned horror film. It’s a towering Gothic building with endless candlelit rooms stuffed with seemingly endless bric-a-bracs and musty furniture. The grounds, including its very own cemetery, are overgrown with twisting weeds and long grass. Of course, this is a place the local villagers will not go. It’

Great Powers, No Responsibility: CHRONICLE

2012-02-03T21:36:00.002-05:00

Josh Trank’s debut feature Chronicle is a nice spin on the typical superhero origin story. It’s such a nice spin that, until late in the film when it makes blatant nods towards that direction, it could be any old found-footage horror movie with vaguely supernatural things happening to a small cast of teens. It starts with Andrew (Dane DeHaan), a loner high-school senior, getting his hands on

Wild vs. Man: THE GREY

2012-02-01T21:55:00.000-05:00

With Kevin Smith’s films it’s always one step forward, two steps back. He’s an auteur utterly incapable of growth along any satisfying career trajectories. There’s a reason why he’s far more beloved for his speaking tours and podcast appearances than for his actual films at this point. Whatever charm he has live and in person – his skills as a conversationalist are

Hot Lunch: SHARK NIGHT 3D

2011-09-04T22:25:00.000-04:00

The appeal of Shark Night 3D is exactly at the level of watching attractive twenty-somethings walk around in bathing suits before getting devoured by special effects. It comes advertised as a PG-13 horror movie about college kids spending some of their summer at a remote beach house on a lake that is suddenly and confusingly full of sharks. You certainly can’t fault the

Flower Power: COLUMBIANA

2011-08-30T22:34:00.001-04:00

Columbiana is an action movie about a child who sits at the kitchen table as the goons of a slimy drug lord gun down mom and dad. The child then escapes and grows up to become a skilled killer out for revenge. It doesn’t sound too notable, does it? It sounds like countless other vengeance-fueled thrillers that have slunk across multiplex screens over the years. Indeed it

Brother's Keepers: OUR IDIOT BROTHER

2011-08-29T09:18:00.001-04:00

Despite a title that sounds like a mean-spirited insult, Our Idiot Brother turns out to be one of the sweetest, kindest, warmest, and generous comedies of the year. It’s an R-rated movie that’s so big hearted it barely registers as raunchy, that loves its characters and wants to see them end up happy. It’s surprisingly fleet, nimbly shifting registers between

Vengeance is His: CONAN THE BARBARIAN

2011-08-26T16:40:00.000-04:00

If the ancient-times set story of a boy who sees his clan slaughtered and subsequently grows into a vengeful warrior sounds familiar, that’s probably because Robert E. Howard’s 1930s stories about Conan the Barbarian were previously adapted to the big screen in a 1982 movie directed and co-written by John Milius and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in one of his earliest roles. That film’s

Spy Again: SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

2011-08-22T22:32:00.000-04:00

The following may be a controversial claim. Spy Kids is Robert Rodriguez’s best movie. The 2001 feature follows a brother and sister, Carmen (Alexa Vega) and Juni (Daryl Sabara), who discover that their parents (Carla Gugino and Antonio Banderas) are spies after they disappear on a mission. It’s up to the kids to save them. Aside from the great plot hook, Rodriguez’s film is filled with

Twenty Days in the Life: ONE DAY

2011-08-20T11:00:00.000-04:00

You pick your friends, or so the saying goes, but that’s not entirely true, is it? Circumstance, coincidence and closeness play a role in friendship as well so that it’s quite possible you can look back upon a time in your life and discover that you were drawn into a friendship that you didn’t value until that person was already gone. Such is the story of Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim

Quick Look: JANE EYRE

2011-08-17T21:00:00.000-04:00

Cary Fukunaga’s new adaptation of Jane Eyre starts with the titular character fleeing across dark, windswept moors in a Gothic storm, signifying this version’s stylistic interests to be that of smoldering, roiling darkness. Aside from setting the striking mood of the opening scene, it’s a decision that marks the narrative disjunction of this film. This is not the opening of Charlotte Brontë’s

Sing Sing: GLEE: THE 3D CONCERT MOVIE

2011-08-16T01:06:00.003-04:00

I don’t write about TV shows here, but if I were to start doing so Glee would not be my first choice. I’d rather write about Breaking Bad, or Mad Men, or Louie, or Parks & Recreation, or Community, or The Good Wife, or, or, or. But, that’s neither here nor there. None of those great shows have a recently released 3D concert movie to their name. Which is just as well since Glee, a show about a

Clock's Ticking: 30 MINUTES OR LESS

2011-08-14T00:47:00.001-04:00

Despite the fact that every character in 30 Minutes or Less is either an idiot or is just acting like one, it doesn’t quite rise to the level of an Idiot Plot. No, that would require characters smart enough to pick up on the fact that the whole complicated mess of a heist is basically ready and available for any one of these participants to figure out, no extra explanation required. These are

More Finals: FINAL DESTINATION 5

2011-08-12T21:14:00.000-04:00

The biggest problem with the last couple Final Destination movies is that the audience starts the film way ahead of the characters. Since rare is the survivor in one of these cinematic death traps, we know all the rules and are forced to wait around for the new batch of characters to catch up to where we are. Each film starts with gathering a group of characters and then

Help Me Help You: THE HELP

2011-08-11T22:47:00.001-04:00

Written and directed by Tate Taylor from the bestselling novel by Katheryn Stockett, The Help is a glossy middlebrow Hollywood civil-rights drama. It’s set in the early 60’s in Jackson, Mississippi and concerns itself with the plight of African American women working as maids cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing for well-to-do white women. The film is all well and good, filled with fine

Change We Can't Believe In: THE CHANGE-UP

2011-08-09T22:37:00.000-04:00

David “Wedding Crashers” Dobkin’s The Change-Up is a rancid pit filled with the putrid remains of offensive, outdated mindsets and regressive stereotypes. It’s a lame body switch comedy that is relentlessly cruel and crude and uses its time on screen to do little more than insult every character and denigrate every lifestyle choice they represent. The worst insult of the

Unidentified Friendly Object: PAUL

2011-08-09T19:33:00.004-04:00

Greg Mottola’s Paul may not have the emotional resonance of his two previous efforts (the excellent coming-of-age films Adventureland and Superbad), but it’s still decent entertainment. It’s a warm geeky embrace of a movie, a sci-fi action comedy, jam-packed with winking references. If you’re like me, the kind of person who can appreciate a collage of homage derived from nearly every notable

Go Ape: RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

2011-08-07T14:41:00.003-04:00

The main character of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a combination reboot / remake / prequel of the kind increasingly common to moribund franchises these days, is a startlingly well-drawn, patiently developed and deeply sympathetic creation. He’s an incredibly talented youngster who grows exponentially in intelligence and capacity as he ages. One unfortunate day, he attacks a neighbor while

Love is a Battlefield: CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE.

2011-08-05T17:30:00.002-04:00

Crazy, Stupid, Love is a romantic comedy that tries to do something new but in the process finds only stale ways to do the same old things. It’s a film with a deeply talented ensemble that walks through intertwining rom-com plotlines, but at the core the whole thing is flat and unconvincing. It has one foot in low-key observational humor and another in broad sentimental

Where the Buffalo and Aliens Roam: COWBOYS & ALIENS

2011-08-04T00:42:00.001-04:00

I don’t like Cowboys & Aliens, which is especially disappointing since I more or less loved, or I was at least ready to like, the individual pieces. It starts as a dusty Western with a mysterious stranger (Daniel Craig) riding into a small frontier town. This is well before the aliens show up. Now, you wouldn’t normally expect a Western to feature a scene in which UFOs

Traverse City Film Festival Dispatch #4

2011-08-01T11:27:00.013-04:00

Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop (d. Rodman Flender) In an age of pervasive access to celebrities everywhere from the so-called mainstream media to paparazzi and Twitter, the kind of access that Rodman Flender offers the audience of Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop is nothing short of astonishing. The film follows the comic and talk show host through the summer between his removal from NBC’s Tonight Show

Traverse City Film Festival Dispatch #3: THE TRIP

2011-07-29T22:04:00.001-04:00

In 1981 versatile French director Louis Malle made My Dinner with Andre, a feature-length conversation between friends and colleagues Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn playing fictionalized versions of themselves. It's a favorite film of mine, an intelligent, dense discussion of art, philosophy, and the ways in which these topics can inform a life in the arts. It's also a delightfully engaging

Traverse City Film Festival Dispatch # 2: PROJECT NIM

2011-07-28T21:37:00.001-04:00

Director James Marsh finds subjects worthy of a large scope in the small, strange, half-forgotten corners of recent history. His Man on Wire is a documentary that finds transcendence in a dangerous high-wire walk. His entry in the sweeping historical crime trilogy Red Riding is one of three films that piece together into a decade spanning mystery. His latest film,

Traverse City Film Festival Dispatch #1

2011-07-28T00:15:00.000-04:00

Being Elmo (d. Constance Marks) Kevin Clash has voiced and performed the popular Sesame Street Muppet Elmo for over twenty-five years. During that time, the little red monster that exudes childlike wonder and unconditional love has become a household name, a character beloved the world over. But despite his fame (and height) most would never recognize Clash

It's Not a Romance / It's Totally a Romance: FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

2011-07-26T18:20:00.004-04:00

Friends with Benefits is a self-loathing romantic comedy, all too ready to hit all the required beats of the genre while almost all the while protesting every one of them. It stars a relaxed, lovable Mila Kunis and a tense, confident Justin Timberlake as young urban professionals and new friends who decide to skip dating and go straight for the bedroom. It’s not that they don’t like each other

Quick Look: TRUST

2011-07-26T10:44:00.002-04:00

If Trust is not the worst movie of the year so far, and it’s not, it’s certainly one of the queasiest. I could imagine a good version of a movie about a young teen girl seduced by an online stranger who then rapes her and throws her, and her family’s, life into emotional overdrive. This is not that movie. Not at all. It’s a sick vortex of awful hysterics and kids-these-days grumbling that plays

Hope and Glory: CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

2011-07-22T04:00:00.004-04:00

Captain America: The First Avenger is the purest distillation of the serial adventure narrative aesthetic since Raiders of the Lost Ark introduced us to Indiana Jones (an adventure this new film obliquely references). To say Captain America isn’t as good as Raiders is merely saying that it isn’t the best action movie ever made. That’s hardly too big a strike against it, is it? This is a pulpy

Stuffed with Fluff: WINNIE THE POOH

2011-07-21T11:01:00.001-04:00

I don’t see how any lover of animation, and certainly any fan of Winnie the Pooh, could be disappointed in Winnie the Pooh, a lovingly hand-drawn animated feature that hews closely to the original tone and structure of the A.A. Milne picture books as filtered through the indelible visual design of the 1960’s Disney shorts based on them and compiled in the altogether wonderful 1977 feature The

Life, the Universe, and Everything: THE TREE OF LIFE

2011-07-20T11:20:00.002-04:00

When I reminisce about my childhood, I don’t tend to remember specific scenes. No, what my mind conjures up are images, fragments, sounds, sensations, and emotions. Out of this noise arise scenes, moments, narratives informed by the stories and anecdotes that I remember and that I’ve been told that contextualize almost all. The genius of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is how it builds a

Paper Chase: PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES

2011-07-19T19:03:00.000-04:00

Andrew Rossi’s documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times is positioned as a film that looks at the changing media landscape. Within the film are various talking heads that pontificate endlessly about the Internet, about the “old guard” journalism of the past, and about “New Media.” But the sad truth is that no matter how hard the film tries to understand just where

Bitter(sweet) End: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2

2011-07-17T23:56:00.000-04:00

Oh, what a treasure it is to return once again to Hogwarts, the school of witchcraft and wizardry, home to many magical adventures, endless inventive expressions of imagination, and the greatest fantasy creation of recent memory. The occasion for the return is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, in which the trio we have followed across seven films in ten years, Harry, Ron, and

Dead or Alive: HORRIBLE BOSSES

2011-07-13T18:35:00.001-04:00

As directed by Seth Gordon, Horrible Bosses is a dark mainstream studio comedy, or rather, as dark as a mainstream, broadly appealing R-rated comedy can get. It’s a movie that has three friends, each with a particularly monstrous boss, deciding almost on a whim and with a Hitchcock reference, that the best way to make their lives easier is through the deaths of their bosses. The most twisted

Royal Mixup: MONTE CARLO

2011-07-08T17:40:00.001-04:00

What makes Monte Carlo such a surprisingly enjoyable squeaky-clean family comedy is its low-key, laid-back approach to its mild farce. It’s a fantasy European vacation involving beautiful scenery, pretty young ladies, fashionable young men, glamorous clothes and accessories, and a central case of improbable mistaken identity, but the movie never makes too much of an

Special Education: LARRY CROWNE

2011-07-08T16:01:00.001-04:00

The most dispiriting aspect of Larry Crowne, a dismal new comedy co-written and directed by Tom Hanks, who also takes the titular role, is the way it strides forward, places its finger on the pulse of modern America and then scurries away, never to contemplate such resonance again. This one well-pitched moment comes, fittingly enough, right at the film’s opening that introduces us to Larry Crowne