The product of two negative integers is a positive one, but the product of two cliché film premises is not an original one, as proven by “The Guilt Trip,” a relentlessly uninspired pairing of the road-trip movie and the mother-son bonding movie. When even the smartly cast Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen–the quintessential Jewish mom […]
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With “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” Peter Jackson triumphantly returns to the franchise that made him one of Hollywood’s most powerful directors. The strengths and weaknesses are largely the same as those of his “Lord of the Rings” films, though “The Hobbit” differs in that it features a simpler, smaller story. This shift in scope
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“Life of Pi” is based on a beloved, bestselling novel, so the process of adapting it for the screen clearly came with a great deal of pressure to satisfy the existing fan-base by following the text to a tee. But most viewers who have no attachment to Yan Martel’s 2001 book will wish that director
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Andrew Dominik’s “Killing Them Softly” is a gangster film that presents the world of the Mob as a microcosm of the 2008 economic collapse that sent the United States into a tailspin. Its characters inhabit an underworld that resembles the mainstream in that there’s an economy, laws to regulate it, and men to enforce the rules. As
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The American film industry operates under the general rule that the narrative of any animated film must be simple enough for a small child to follow completely, a practice that harms kids more than it helps them, in that they are, as a result, very rarely exposed to the kind of sophisticated storytelling that might
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“Lincoln” is not a biopic of President Abraham Lincoln, as the title might suggest, but a look at the legislative process through which he came to be known as the Great Emancipator. Large swaths of the movie are more akin to CSPAN 1865 than a comprehensive look at the man or the issues of his
Bill Condon is the best thing that could have ever happened to the “Twilight” franchise. After two paralytically humorless sequels that pleased little more than diehard fans, the acclaimed director of “Kinsey” and “Dreamgirls” unexpectedly took the reigns on the series’ fourth entry and effectively restored the original’s endearing fusion of teen film romance and
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“Skyfall,” is, like all James Bond films to some degree, a conservative work. That’s not to say politically conservative, but stylistically, the way that it safely fits within the cinematic zeitgeist. And as an action film of the times, “Skyfall” serves as a fine example. Audiences have come to expect their heroes broken and stripped
“Cloud Atlas” is a huge, exhausting film, one that might defy audiences to even make up their minds about whether or not they like it. It’s an important work in that it demands analysis and discussion as precious few do, providing a cornucopia of ambitious technical decisions, intertwined narratives, and New Age rhetoric that succeeds
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Detractors of “Wreck-It Ralph” will undoubtedly dwell on the shameless transparency of the Walt Disney Company’s attempt to expand the size of their potential audience by melding a classic arcade game-based premise that evokes nostalgia in 20- and 30-somethings with their usual family-oriented formula. But this isn’t a fair point of criticism unless one presumes
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