Fellow movie critic Jason Zingale recently joked of suffering indie movie fatigue, in that the indies are beating the snot out of their big-budget cousins…and he’s actually getting tired of it. Are the big boys ever going to hit back? The long-term answer is yes, when Fox releases “Avatar,” but the short-term answer is no, as evidenced by the following of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” with “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.” Ugh. Indie movie fatigue or not, thank goodness for “District 9,” as it pulls off a rather impressive feat in being smarter and bloodier than any other…
Author: David Medsker
“Julie & Julia” is a movie out of time, and not just because it takes place in both the ‘50s and earlier this decade. The writer/director at the helm hasn’t had a hit in 11 years, and the movie appears to be oblivious to any of the recent changes in cinema trends (though we do get to hear Meryl Streep utter a word that had previously been unthinkable). This actually proves to be a good thing; after all, we’re talking about a summer movie involving Julia Child and post-9/11 New York. Making this movie hip would have rendered it unwatchable,…
Some have gone on record as saying that the heavy metal documentary “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” is one of the funniest movies they’ve ever seen. From here, that is sheer schadenfraude. To find it hilarious, one would have to take joy in the band’s misfortune (of which there is a truckload), and anyone who does that is a) missing the point, and b) seriously messed up. There are some funny moments, yes, but the movie is more tragedy than comedy. If anything, “Anvil!” is the mother of all underdog movies, and if you’re not cheering for these guys by…
On the surface, “The Ugly Truth” looks like it was assembled by a random screenplay generator. Take Katherine Heigl’s uptight TV character from “Knocked Up,” pit her against a cynical chauvinist not unlike her foil in “27 Dresses,” then sit back and watch the magic happen. It shouldn’t work on any level, but it does, at least some of the time. And give the filmmakers credit for taking a female-centric rom-com premise that’s tailor-made for a PG-13 rating, and veering straight into R-rated territory. The movie plays dumb far too often – and for no good reason – but they…
Someone at Warner Brothers must have used a charm spell on the members of the MPAA in order to secure a PG rating for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” This is one creepy movie, with hexes, poisonings, bloody wizard duels, an undead army, and death. Conversely, it is also the funniest “Potter” movie to date, and the first to explore the raging hormones lurking within our heroes and heroines alike. This combination of teenage nightmares both real (Voldemort) and imaginary (the opposite sex) produces the most grounded “Potter” movie to date, and arguably the best. The movie begins with…
Michael Mann is one of the few directors working today that is a bigger star than the people he hires to act in his movies. As in, getting Johnny Depp and Christian Bale to headline a movie about John Dillinger and the FBI agent determined to hunt him down is cool, but getting them to do it for Michael Mann is really cool. But here’s the catch: the end result isn’t nearly as cool as it looks on paper, and that has been the case for several of Mann’s recent movies. Sure, “Public Enemies” is a step up from his…
Say this for “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”: it is without question the biggest, most insanely epic, blow-shit-uppingest action movie ever made. The problem is that that is not exactly a good thing. Instead of assembling a taut, suspenseful, action-packed thrill ride – with, you know, a plot – Michael Bay has made a movie that refuses to stop with the carnage until it has split the viewer’s skull open and feasted on the brainy goodness inside, like some demented celluloid zombie. Nonstop action is one thing: what happens here is just abuse. The movie takes place two years after…
It’s the ‘90s all over again. Two movies featuring a child that has a profound, borderline mystical impact on the life of a self-absorbed grown-up, which the grown-up then abuses for his own selfish interests, only to learn a Valuable Life Lesson in the end? Truth be told, it seemed much sexier when the dueling projects involved viruses, volcanoes and meteors. And unlike those other movies, which hit the multiplexes within weeks of each other – well, except the virus projects, as “Crisis in the Hot Zone” was killed once they saw how far ahead of them “Outbreak” was –…
A news bit recently made the rounds about the screenwriter for “The Proposal.” When the script was purchased and put into production, the studio believed that the script had been written by an unknown writer named Jennifer Kirby, but it was later revealed that the writer was “Eagle Eye” co-producer Peter Chiarelli, using his wife’s first name and mother’s maiden name as a pseudonym. After watching the movie, it is painfully obvious that this was written by a man, as the female lead is beaten to a pulp (figuratively speaking, for the most part) from start to finish, while the…
“Moon” is a sight for sore eyes on a couple of levels. It draws its inspiration from the thinking man’s branch of science fiction, a genre that is, sadly, dying at the hands of shape-shifting robots and little green men. It’s also a pleasant surprise because, well, this has been a lousy year for movies, and I love seeing a small, unassuming film like “Moon” show up its more expensive, major studio cousins. Set in the not-so-distant future, astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is the sole tenant on Sarang, a Moon-based space station owned by Lunar Industries, where he monitors…