By Rex Reed 10/23/12 7:46pm

movies

Jim Broadbent and Hanks in Cloud Atlas. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Atlas, Drugged: This Colossal Misuse of Cast, Crew and Cash Unceremoniously Collapses in on Itself

Almost three hours long, a lugubrious sludge of mud soup called Cloud Atlas deserves a limp nod for pure guts, I suppose, but what I’d really like to do is burn it. Based on a genre-switching, era-hopping, style-abusing, tempo-thumping novel by David Mitchell that everyone has always labeled “unfilmable,” the labyrinthine, ridiculously bloated—$100-million, anybody?—head-scratcher of a movie is the mess that proves it.

Coming at us in sections like an exploding garbage truck, this adaptation is a single film that weaves an incomprehensible literary gumbo of unrelated stories in multiple time frames over a span of 500 years. Whew! Read More

By Christopher Rosen 12/18/09 2:48pm

Opening This Weekend: A Little Something Called Avatar, Daniel Day-Lewis and Jeff Bridges Sing, and The Morgans Make Us Want to Enter Witness Protection

With only thirteen days left in 2009—seriously, where did this year go?—it should come as no surprise that Hollywood is pulling out the big guns. Five films reach theaters today, but all everyone will really care about come Monday is the one with 10-foot tall blue aliens. As we do every Friday, here’s a handy Read More

By Christopher Rosen 10/15/08 7:09pm

A New James L. Brooks Movie Or What?

Call it the mystery of the overwrought director. Last night while perusing the internets we saw a story posted on Ain’t It Cool News about director James L. Brooks’ latest project, a (probable) mawkish romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker for Sony Pictures. The story almost seemed ominous in alluding that the Read More

By David Foxley 11/12/07 5:53pm

Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley Have That Bruce-and-Demi Kind of Love

Old flames, it seems, snuff hard. For the second time in a month, Hugh Grant and his onetime girlfriend, Elizabeth Hurley, have been spotted together—most recently at New York’s J.F.K. Apparently more of a Bruce Willis-and-Demi Moore kind of relationship than something less platonic, Mr. Grant, 47, tagged along with Ms. Hurley, 42, Read More

By Rex Reed 2/19/07 12:00am

Hugh and Drew Are Kinda Cute

Music and Lyrics is not a milestone in cinema history, but after the plethora of alleged comedies we’ve been getting lately, this feel-fine rom-com with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore is a perfect warm-hearted, heart-shaped antidote to the winter blahs. It is also the perfect date-flick valentine.

The affable Mr. Grant, who is finally Read More

By Rex Reed 11/10/03 12:00am

Lovesick Brits Ooze Treacle

Maybe it’s just me, but does anyone else find most of today’s alleged screen “comedies” so rueful, insipid and dumb that you rarely crack a smile while watching them? We could all use some pain relief from the congestion of cruelty, depression and violence we’ve been getting from the movies lately, but the facile humor Read More