October 08, 2009
The House of the Devil
(out of four)
Call it the best '80s babysitter-in-peril movie never made. The House of the Devil delivers about as much as one could reasonably hope from the not-quite-alone-in-the-house category, with the bonus of authentically re-creating the low-budget look and feel of that era's classic horror entries. Still, talk about setting your sights low, as the pic seems content to polish a subpar subgenre. Nevertheless, auds seeking a stripped-down retro spine-tingler that builds to an intense climax will appreciate what director Ti West has accomplished, with strong on-demand interest for the Magnet title leading up to its Oct. 30 theatrical release.
Continue reading "The House of the Devil" at Variety.com
Posted by Peter Debruge on October 8, 09 at 06:59 PM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2007
Talk to Me
(out of four)
Petey Greene is a legend in Washington, D.C., where as the world's unlikeliest disc jockey — an alcoholic ex-con with a vocabulary entirely unsuited to FCC standards — he became a sounding board for the civil rights movement.
He was a one-of-a-kind personality living under incredible circumstances, and actor Don Cheadle brings the man to fiery life in the most charismatic performance of his career, smoothing out Greene's rougher edges for our sake. Directed by Kasi Lemmons (Eve's Bayou), Talk to Me reaches beyond a mere biopic plot to capture the moment when America's black community found its voice. When Petey gets out of prison and bursts into the offices of WOL-AM to collect on a job, it's as if the entire neighborhood is storming the station demanding to be heard, only to find The Man himself (Martin Sheen) barring the door.
Posted by Peter Debruge on July 13, 07 at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)
June 08, 2007
Surf's Up
(out of four)
Just when parents managed to calm their tap-dancing tots, along comes another animated penguin pic — this time featuring South Pole fowl who surf. Like last year's Happy Feet, Surf's Up tells the story of a cuddly outcast who dreams big, much to the consternation of his flock, only this time, the personal journey is captured in the form of a mockumentary, complete with virtual crew and "handheld" cameras. Every bit as entertaining as the early Christopher Guest efforts, Sony toon is well positioned to ride the wave of penguin popularity to success this summer.
Continue reading "Surf's Up" at Variety.com
Posted by Peter Debruge on June 8, 07 at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2007
Julia
(out of four)
Sorry, but I don't buy the image of Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) in a rowboat that bookends Fred Zinnemann's Julia. It's painterly, sure, and open-ended enough that audiences can project virtually any emotion they wish on the playwright's private, reflective moment, but it’s out of character with both Lillian and the film itself. The movie, a 1977 best picture nominee that ran alongside Star Wars and Annie Hall, was heralded in its time for its audacious structure, and yet, that’s precisely the element that seems most frustrating today.
Posted by Peter Debruge on April 24, 07 at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2007
Mon Colonel
(out of four)
It will sound petty, but it must be said: Film is not made to support horizontal pans (as in, those moves in which the camera swivels briskly from left to right), and at times Mon Colonel feels like nothing but significant vistas reduced to herky-jerky blurs. Laurent Herbiet’s feature debut is just the ambitious political stick in the eye you might expect from an story idea hatched by Costa-Gavras (the director of Oscar winner Z), and its inquiry into the dirty dealings of France’s Algerian occupation is considerably more sophisticated than last year’s Indigènes, though nowhere near as entertaining.
Continue reading "Mon Colonel"
Posted by Peter Debruge on April 21, 07 at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2007
Hot Fuzz
(out of four)
Hot Fuzz does for buddy-cop flicks what Shaun of the Dead did for zombie movies: It delivers a solid specimen of the genre even as it lampoons the category from every conceivable angle. Director Edgar Wright with star and co-writer Simon Pegg are first and foremost movie buffs, and their sense of humor reflects a deep reverence for the work of guys like Jerry Bruckheimer (Bad Boys) and Joel Silver (Die Hard). They see the poetry in, say, Point Break typically lost on film critics and Jane Austen fans.
Posted by Peter Debruge on April 20, 07 at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2007
Shooter
(out of four)
As his name would suggest, Bob "the Nailer" Swagger is the type of expert marksman who lives by the mantra, shoot first, ask questions later. Dubbed Shooter for the screen, Swagger's first explosive adventure leaves you wanting to get right back on and ride again.
The thriller is based on film critic Stephen Hunter's Point of Impact, a novel no doubt drawn from sitting through and distilling countless action movies. It's inherently cinematic material, featuring a franchise-ready new hero, and Mark Wahlberg's the right man for the job.
Posted by Peter Debruge on March 23, 07 at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)
The Last Mimzy
(out of four)
What exactly is a "Mimzy"? For the average adult, watching the E.T.-like sci-fi adventure The Last Mimzy isn't likely to clear up the mystery, although there's little doubt kids will understand (and love) the floppy-eared time traveler aimed directly at their eager young intellects.
Mimzies come from the future disguised as children's toys. They contain the power to unlock complex knowledge in the minds of special kids. Vacationing at their family beach house, Noah and Emma (newcomers Rhiannon Leigh Wryn and Chris O'Neil) happen upon a box filled with strange objects: ancient-looking rocks that spin in mid-air, a futuristic prism only they can see and a stuffed rabbit named "Mimzy."
Continue reading "The Last Mimzy"
Posted by Peter Debruge on March 23, 07 at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2007
Bridge to Terabithia
(out of four)
To reach Narnia, you must first locate the portal at the back of a magic wardrobe. But to visit Terabithia, you need only daydream a place where anything can happen.
For Jess Aarons (Josh Hutcherson) and Leslie Burke (AnnaSophia Robb), that parallel universe exists in the overgrown woods behind Jess' house. And if you buy the premise that a 10-year-old boy wouldn't think to explore his own backyard until a girl (of all things!) suggests the idea, it's relatively easy to accept the magical kingdom that comes to life there.
Continue reading "Bridge to Terabithia"
Posted by Peter Debruge on February 16, 07 at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)
Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts
(out of four)
Tired of losing the annual Oscar pool over short film category titles you haven't even heard of, much less seen? Carve out 1 1/2 hours to catch all five live-action nominees, or take our word for it: This year, as usual, there's one entry that towers above the crowd.
All the way from Senegal, Binta and the Great Idea tells the story of a 7-year-old village girl who makes a case not only for everyone's right to attend school (her old-world uncle insists on keeping his daughter at home) but also for educating ourselves by considering the world through another's eyes. It's a lively, colorful piece of filmmaking, capped by a stunning sequence in which palm trees prove that an all-natural fireworks show doesn't require rockets.
The other nominees simply aspire to set up a single punch line. In the Australian-made The Saviour, a Mormon evangelist woos a married woman. Spain's Eramos Pocos (One Too Many) features an amusing twist on an age-old rivalry, in which a man makes up with his mother-in-law after his wife walks out. And the Danish Helmer & Son gives an impatient man an awkward opportunity to better understand his father. The American selection, West Bank Story, is a corny musical comedy spoofing West Side Story by imagining a romance between rival falafel stands.
[as featured in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram]
Posted by Peter Debruge on February 16, 07 at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2007
Curse of the Golden Flower
(out of four)
"All that glisters is not gold ... Gilded tombs do worms enfold." — William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Gold hides all manner of corruption, from incest to murder, in Zhang Yimou's extravagant Curse of the Golden Flower. A wildly fictionalized account of turmoil in China's Later Tang Dynasty, Curse presents an Imperial Palace so spectacular, the director seems to be daring us to imagine the rot festering beneath its gilded surfaces.
Continue reading "Curse of the Golden Flower"
Posted by Peter Debruge on January 12, 07 at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2006
Fur
(out of four)
People don't pay to be psychoanalyzed at the movies, but maybe they should. You will learn virtually nothing about legendary New York photographer Diane Arbus — except that she pronounced her name "Dee-Ann" — and everything about yourself in Fur. That's because the movie isn't a literal history of the artist's life at all, but a metaphorical examination of the process by which a docile and obedient housewife finds it possible to embrace beauty in what those around her deemed "perverse."
Biopics, as a genre, famously distort the facts to suit the screen, inciting all sorts of fervor among the detail-mongers of the world.
Posted by Peter Debruge on November 17, 06 at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)
August 04, 2006
The Descent
(out of four)
Caves are scary. Not only are they pitch-black and craggy and filled with creepy-crawlers, they seem to go endlessly ... down. If heaven is all pearly gates and pillowy clouds, as any good Sunday school student can tell you, then hell is a cave. And the deeper you go, the worse it gets. Just ask Dante.
The Descent, as the name implies, is about one such journey deep into the bowels of hell, complete with demons who, while not invincible, certainly seem plausible. The whole setup — feral subhuman foes and all — is enough to make Deliverance fans squeal in terror. Better still, The Descent manages to be every bit as intense before the monsters show up as it is once the feeding frenzy begins. Imagine, a horror film in which you actually care about the characters -- even when they are half a dozen dead-meat female hotties who might just as easily have found work posing for the first six months of a swimsuit calendar.
Continue reading "The Descent"
Posted by Peter Debruge on August 4, 06 at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2006
Monster House
(out of four)
Anybody who's ever been 10 years old can tell you how the most ominous house on the block takes on a certain notoriety among the neighborhood kids. Even though no one's ever seen the old guy who lives behind the sagging porch and cobwebbed windows, rumor has it he murdered his wife and eats little kids.
Most of us have forgotten those years, the way our pace would quicken when crossing in front of said house, lest whatever grim force lurking within has a chance to snatch us from the sidewalk and gobble us up for dinner. But not the makers of Monster House. They know just the dynamic that drives boys' imaginations wild, and they push it -- a little too far maybe, but the stunt works until just about the point when the movie must commit to whether there's really anything out of the ordinary about old man Nebbercracker's place.
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Posted by Peter Debruge on July 21, 06 at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)
June 09, 2006
The Proposition
(out of four)
The western is a dead genre. That doesn't mean new entries in the category are unwelcome (especially not one with the built-in cult pedigree of a script and soundtrack by Nick Cave), but as far as the general public is concerned, audiences have moved on, and with good reason, too. The themes that dominate the genre -- namely lawlessness, xenophobia and vigilantism -- have carried over into gangster and science-fiction pictures, where slick stylization wins out over endless dust-covered expanses.
Continue reading "The Proposition"
Posted by Peter Debruge on June 9, 06 at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2006
Over the Hedge
(out of four)
The foragers — a raccoon, a turtle, a skunk, a squirrel, two possums and a family of porcupines, for those keeping score at home — eat to live. When they're not hibernating, these critters spend the rest of the year gathering bark and berries to hold them over the next winter.
As for the humans just over the hedge, "These guys live to eat," explains RJ (Bruce Willis, more Death Becomes Her than Die Hard). "For humans, enough is never enough. And what do they do with the stuff they don't eat? They put it in gleaming silver cans just for us." Leave it to a raccoon to condense the lessons of Fast Food Nation into a monologue worth the price of admission.
Continue reading "Over the Hedge"
Posted by Peter Debruge on May 19, 06 at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
April 28, 2006
Hard Candy
(out of four)
Hard Candy tells the story of a 14-year-old nymphet who teases a child molester 18 years her senior on IM, invites herself over to his house, drugs the guy and proceeds to torture him on behalf of those he might otherwise harm in the future.
What parent would take their child to see this movie? This, folks, is the reason the NC-17 rating exists. And yet Hard Candy is rated R -- as were High Tension and both Saw movies before it. Evidently Lionsgate, the company behind all four, knows something the rest of us don't about how the MPAA operates.
Posted by Peter Debruge on April 28, 06 at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)
December 09, 2005
Memoirs of a Geisha
(out of four)
Cinema, by definition, isn't equipped to tell a story like Memoirs of a Geisha. Whereas Arthur Golden's bestselling novel depends on wall-to-wall narration for its insider view of the oft-misunderstood world of Japanese geisha, the movie by Chicago director Rob Marshall conforms to the notion of cinema as an observational medium, where voiceover is derided as the crutch of a filmmaker too prosaic to find an elegant visual alternative.
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Posted by Peter Debruge on December 9, 05 at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2005
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
(out of four)
"The words 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,' which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this." – film critic Pauline Kael, 1968
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Posted by Peter Debruge on November 11, 05 at 07:45 AM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2005
New York Doll
(out of four)
If you were going to make a rockumentary about the short-lived but enormously influential '70s glam band, The New York Dolls, you'd probably choose to follow lead singer David Johansen, who revived his career after the Dolls dissolved by reinventing himself as Buster Poindexter. Or you might catch up with guitarist Sylvain Sylvain, who kept right on rockin', despite the many setbacks that effectively obliterated the Dolls (drummer Billy Murcia drowning in his bath, guitarist Johnny Thunders deserting the Dolls to form The Heartbreakers, and so on). No self-respecting Dolls fan would lead with Arthur "Killer" Kane, the Frankenstein-like bass player (his stone-still stage presence inspired the band's biographer to dub him "the only living statue in rock and roll") who was fired by his own band, defected from New York to La La Land, and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Continue reading "New York Doll"
Posted by Peter Debruge on October 28, 05 at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2005
Shopgirl
(out of four)
They say it's impossible to meet people in Los Angeles. They say the traffic, the nightlife, the contagious narcissism of the industry itself all work against meaningful human interaction. Who is this "They," you wonder? Why, "the inimitable collective Them," as Cameron Crowe might say, and as much as I regret referencing Elizabethtown in the context of a Shopgirl review, a quick comparison is in order: Both films offer carefully contrived depictions of "real life" in which an outsider sincerely wants to identify with the deep, beautiful melancholy of how it feels to be young, alone, and desperately in need of something to motivate his/her existence.
Posted by Peter Debruge on October 21, 05 at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)
September 30, 2005
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
(out of four)
"That woman's a saint,'' whispered a lady down the aisle 10 minutes into The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, and sure enough, the way the movie paints '50s housewife Evelyn Ryan, the woman is a saint. She gave up everything to raise her children, channeling the wit she might've used as a writer into concocting clever jingles for mail-in competitions that kept her family fed, dressed and relatively happy.
Continue reading "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"
Posted by Peter Debruge on September 30, 05 at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2005
March of the Penguins
(out of four)
It's tempting when watching Luc Jacquet's March of the Penguins to think of the movie's emperor penguin subjects as human. In fact, it's practically encouraged. The penguins are "not that different from us," insists narrator Morgan Freeman, who introduces the film as "a story of love." Freeman is clearly enraptured with the little birds. You can almost see the Oscar winner's eyes twinkling as he offers his sage if all-too-often sentimental commentary throughout the picture. But are they really anything like us?
Continue reading "March of the Penguins"
Posted by Peter Debruge on June 23, 05 at 08:11 AM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2005
Shrek 2
(out of four)
Even ogres can live happily ever after. That was the charming twist at the end of Shrek, in which a beautiful princess chose to embrace her inner ogre over the certain boredom of marrying a handsome prince. In the increasingly déclassé world of old Disney storybook classics, the gaseous, raucous, and unapologetically non-PC Shrek was downright revolutionary. And just as startling as its willful irreverence was its cutting-edge computer animation, from the nitro-yellow-green glow of Shrek’s pockmarked skin to the meticulously rendered leaves of the fairy-tale forest.
Posted by Peter Debruge on May 19, 05 at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)