Director Jay Roach’s “Game Change,” which aired on HBO earlier this year, ranks among the most blockheaded political movies ever made. Without so much as smirking, Roach and writer Danny Strong ask the viewer to accept the impossible proposition that Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was so ill-informed when she joined the McCain campaign that […]
Review: “The Campaign” Read More »
Rashida Jones’ Celeste, the protagonist of “Celeste and Jesse Forever,” publishes a non-fiction book called Shitegeist, which, as you may have inferred, is about how the zeitgeist has been turned to ‘shite’ by entitled rich kids and talentless pop-stars. This could have been the basis for a sharp, funny observation of the fact that the
Review: “Celeste and Jesse Forever” Read More »
With 2009’s “Coraline” and now “ParaNorman,” the artists at LAIKA, Inc. have asserted themselves as some of the best minds in contemporary animation. While not as cerebral as Pixar’s best works, LAIKA’s two features achieve the same great feat that the productions of that preeminent studio are known for: transcending the “family film” mold by
Review: “ParaNorman” Read More »
Martin McDonagh’s “In Bruges” is two movies in one — the first two acts a mournful, blackly funny, Catholicism-influenced mediation on guilt; the last a balls-to-the-walls, screwball action farce. If the film were a man walking down the street, he’d be dressed in a crisp dress shirt and a finely tailored sport-jacket on top and
Reviews by Request: “In Bruges” (2008) Read More »
Famed British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen isn’t letting the fact that his “The Dictator” (due out on Blu-Ray August 21) didn’t turn as much of a profit as prior efforts “Borat” and “Brüno” did. He is moving forward on a James Bond spoof that he will write with Phil Johnston (“Cedar Rapids”) for Paramount Pictures.
Sacha Baron Cohen to write James Bond spoof Read More »
As you may know, the British magazine Sight & Sound recently published the results of its once-a-decade Critics Poll on the best films of all-time. None of us here at Critic Speak were asked to participate (shocker), so we have decided to publish a short piece on the films that we think most deserved to
Glaring omissions: Our critics weigh in on the Sight & Sound Top 50 Read More »
It was another mostly uneventful weekend at the box office, with both of the new openers, “Total Recall” and “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days,” failing to conjure up much excitement from the moviegoing masses. Neither came close to beating “The Dark Knight Rises” for the top spot. That said, both did markedly better
Weekend Box Office: “Total Recall” opens OK, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid 3” lowest in series Read More »
It’s fitting that Len Wiseman’s “Total Recall” remake features a gigantic robot army, given that his films have always demonstrated the bare minimum level of interest in actual people. That’s why Wiseman was a particularly poor choice for adapting Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 masterpiece about a man who discovers that his memories are false and he’s
Review: “Total Recall” Read More »
Benoît Jacquot’s “Farewell, My Queen” tells a familiar story–the downfall of Marie Antoinette at the beginning of the French Revolution–but it does so from a perspective through which the events are rarely considered: that of a servant within Versailles. Adapted from a novel by the French historian Chantal Thomas, the film would function splendidly on
Review: “Farewell, My Queen” Read More »
Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I hopelessly try to predict the upcoming weekend’s box office figures. After last weekend’s downright dismal showings of less than $13 million for each of the new openers, “The Watch” and “Step Up Revolution,” there’s no place to go but up. (That is,
Box Office Beat: Weekend of August 3 Read More »
