By Rex Reed 10/30/12 5:38pm

movies

Ivanir, Hoffman, Keener and Walken in A Late Quartet.

High-Strung: Performances in A Late Quartet Are Worthy of Standing Ovation, But Story Tends To Play a Little Sharp

In A Late Quartet, a somber, moody and uneven film about chamber music and the dedicated professional musicians who devote their lives to playing it, Christopher Walken takes some getting used to as a renowned cellist with Parkinson’s disease who is forced begrudgingly to end his career as leader of one of the world’s most celebrated string quartets. A far cry from the lurid and sloppy addicts, psychopaths and serial killers he usually plays as though walking in his sleep, it’s not the kind of role I would personally think of as perfect casting for him. Also, the movie is too slow, highbrow and sophisticated to draw the youth market that loves to see Mr. Walken play violent and stoned in trash like Seven Psychopaths. But playing the cello is such a pleasant change of pace that he eventually grows on you, scene by scene, proving for the first time since his role as Leonardo DiCaprio’s troubled father 10 years ago in Catch Me If You Can, that he really can act. He—along with the rest of the elegant cast—keeps A Late Quartet in tune when it threatens to go flat.  Read More

By Rex Reed 10/02/12 7:39pm

movies

Janney, Platt, Laurie and Shawkat in The Oranges.

From Concentrate: Julian Farino’s Saturated Direction Weighs Down Disastrously Dense Oranges

Leaden and cliché-riddled, The Oranges is, for starters, not about the four neighboring townships in New Jersey. There are no emerald green lawns in New Jersey in December (and it was filmed in New Rochelle). No, it’s about two neighboring dysfunctional families—instead of just one—who live across the street from each other. David and Paige Walling (Hugh Laurie and Catherine Keener) have been best friends with Terry and Carol Ostroff (Oliver Platt and Allison Janney) for years. They exercise, barbecue, raise their kids and celebrate Christmas together, and frankly it’s as boring to them as it is to the viewer. Paige is obsessed with Christmas and spends too much time shopping for ornaments and organizing her choir of carol-singing flakes to pay much attention to David, who holes up every night in front of his TV set in his off-limits “man cave.” (Shades of Tommy Lee Jones in the brighter, far superior Hope Springs.) Their marriage has hit a speed bump, and one of the many things wrong with this movie is that nobody ever bothers to explain why.

But things are about to change in the teeth-clenching dramedy of a TV sitcom, when the Ostroffs’ daughter Nina (Leighton Meester) returns home after five years away at college (Huh? No summer vacations or Thanksgiving reunions in five years?) and a hippie romance that has just hit the rocks, and starts sleeping with Mr. Walling, who is more than twice her age. Read More

By Rex Reed 6/13/12 12:17pm

movies

Fonda in Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding.

Peace, Love, & Nana’s High in a Timeless Fonda’s Latest

Jane Fonda is always a welcome antidote to the hackneyed drivel of today’s movies, even when she’s relegated to sharing the screen with also-rans like Jennifer Lopez and Lindsay Lohan. In her career zenith, she could always be counted on to bring both complexity and nuance to the least deserving roles. At 74, she hasn’t forgotten a thing. With a wonderful, careful and admiring director, she gives even a routine picture unbridled energy, craft and an extra dash of class above and beyond the script. All reasons to embrace Bruce Beresford’s warm, polished, feel-good comedy Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding.  Read More

By Alexandria Symonds 3:06am

The Shindigger

Jane Fonda Was No Hippie

We weren’t expecting a New York screening of a film about a Chinese dancer to be a heavily Australian event, but that’s what Monday night’s special showing of Mao’s Last Dancer at the Crosby Street Hotel was-its director, Bruce Beresford, is an Aussie, and the screening was presented by Australian Consul General Phillip Scanlan. The Read More

By Sara Vilkomerson 10/13/09 8:16pm

Wild Thing, I Wish I Loved You

Where the Wild Things Are
Running time 100 minutes
Written by Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze
Directed by Spike Jonze
Starring Max Records, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose, Paul Dano, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper

I’m the first to admit that I went into Where the Wild Things Are with Read More

By Andrew Sarris 4/21/09 4:34pm

Play It Again, Jamie! Foxx Soars as Schizo Virtuoso

The Soloist
Running Time 109 minutes
Written by Susannah Grant
Directed by Joe Wright
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Jamie Foxx, Catherine Keener, Lisagay Hamilton

Joe Wright’s The Soloist, from the screenplay by Susannah Grant, is based on the book The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music, by Steve Read More

By Andrew Sarris 4/17/06 12:00am

Slevin’s Debt to Tarantino: Who Cares as Long as It’s Fun?

Paul McGuigan’s Lucky Number Slevin, from a screenplay by Jason Smilovic, masterfully manages to materialize as a fast-talking play on words, plots and fatally mistaken identities, with acknowledged debts to Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) and the James Bond series, and an unacknowledged debt to the convulsively trick-and-corpse-laden cinema of Quentin Tarantino. The point Read More

By Andrew Sarris 4/17/06 12:00am

Slevin’s Debt to Tarantino: Who Cares as Long as It’s Fun?

Paul McGuigan’s Lucky Number Slevin, from a screenplay by Jason Smilovic, masterfully manages to materialize as a fast-talking play on words, plots and fatally mistaken identities, with acknowledged debts to Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) and the James Bond series, and an unacknowledged debt to the convulsively trick-and-corpse-laden cinema of Quentin Tarantino. The point Read More