Nobody really wants to see your home movies but you. Struggling actor-writer-producer-director Mark Webber would be wise to keep that in mind after the tepid reaction to his sincere but inconsequential The End of Love.
The movie stars Mr. Webber, who calls himself by his own first name, and his 2-year-old son Isaac Love, who Read More
An odd, uneasy political thriller called Inescapable is the first feature by Syrian-Canadian filmmaker Ruba Nadda since she made waves with the intriguing 2009 cross-cultural romantic interlude Cairo Time. That she has reteamed with that film’s star, the Sudanese-British actor Alexander Siddig, is good news, but the results are more of a mixed bag—well-intentioned but Read More
In Vincente Minnelli’s 1952 classic The Bad and the Beautiful–—one of the greatest films ever made about the inner workings of the Hollywood movie industry—Walter Pidgeon played a studio executive whose motto was “Bring me films that end with a kiss and black ink on the books.” Today’s films rarely end in either, but don’t Read More
From countless movies, books and television documentaries on the History Channel, we know about the Nazis who were rounded up and tried as war criminals after World War II, but what about the children of the Third Reich who survived? What happened to them in the eyes of the allies, the Germans and the world? This issue is illuminated in Lore, a brave, gripping, relentlessly absorbing film from Australia, shot in Germany and played entirely in German with English subtitles. It’s Australia’s deserving contender for this year’s Academy Award, for a very good reason. As a chilling footnote to the most brutal chapter in human history, and a Holocaust film unlike any other, it shows the legacy of Nazism through the eyes of innocent children in the aftermath of horror. Without the usual scenes of torture and carnage, it examines the postwar landscape of a defeated ideology with wrenching force. In Lore, the battles are fought in the hearts and minds of children so young that their only crime was to believe the lies their parents told them. Prepare to be moved to tears. Read More
How many ways can a grown person waste valuable time and lose vital I.Q. points at the same time? If you’re a movie critic, the possibilities are unlimited. And they all come together in a new chunk of junk called Identity Thief.
In the trashy, stupefying screenplay by Craig Mazin, Jason Bateman is a Denver Read More
It is to her everlasting credit that a famously exasperating perfectionist like Barbra Streisand could survive a limp noodle like The Guilt Trip. This cheesy comedy concerns a nerdy, 30-something loser named Andy (Seth Rogen) and his obnoxious, overbearing mother Joyce (Ms. Streisand) on a road trip from Manhattan to San Francisco that is understandably Read More
Okay. So Lincoln, Steven Spielberg’s bloated $50-million history lesson about Abraham Lincoln’s final days in office as he attempted, by hook or crook, to abolish slavery, is noble, civic-minded, exhaustingly researched, immaculately detailed, crowded with a parade of cameos by good actors who look like Smith Brothers cough drop models, and noteworthy for another critic-proof performance by Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role. It is all of those things. But Lincoln is also a colossal bore. It is so pedantic, slow-moving, sanitized and sentimental that I kept pinching myself to stay awake—which, like the film itself, didn’t always work.
The Civil War is in its fourth year. Lincoln has already signed his famous Emancipation Proclamation, a year before his re-election to a second term. Now he wants an anti-slavery amendment to guarantee that the slaves he freed will stay that way forever, protected by law. He needs votes from a hostile, divided Congress to pass it. That means getting the support of Democrats—rabid right-wing conservatives in those days—as well as liberal, left-wing Republicans. (How times have changed!) And that’s what Lincoln is about. Read More
The big question the pessimists are asking about Skyfall, the 23rd entry in the James Bond franchise: Does 007 still have a license to keep an audience alert? The answer: And how! Some of the exhilaration faded when Sean Connery lost his hair and took a powder, but 50 years after Ian Fleming’s super-cool agent from Her Majesty’s Secret Service was shot from a cannon into movie history, Bond is back, and so is high-octane entertainment.
Skyfall may not reach the sophisticated heights of Casino Royale, but it’s better than the lollygagging Quantum of Solace.With buff, camera-ready Daniel Craig lending fresh fisticuffs to the role, and acclaimed director Sam Mendes adding more realism and fewer jokes than in most Bond pictures, it’s a satisfying entertainment that delivers a kangaroo kick from start to finish. Read More
Well-intentioned but so clumsily executed by Indo-Guyanese writer-director Shundell Prasad that whole scenes seem to be missing, Festival of Lights is about the plight of Indian immigrants from the South American country of Guyana in their daunting efforts to assimilate in the U.S. It opens our eyes to a subculture about which most of us know very little, but it is so unsteady in its focus that interest wanes. Read More
A horror film by the estimable, sober-minded Barry Levinson? Why not? The veteran director of such earnest endeavors as Rain Man, Diner, Bugsy and Sleepers has always entertained a lighter streak. He began his career writing The Carol Burnett Show, and Wag the Dog was a political satire. But a genuine hair-raising creature feature is a real departure. Say hello to The Bay.
Using the time-tested conceit of “found footage” popularized by films like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, the meticulous Mr. Levinson, with the urgency of a naturalistic screenplay by Michael Wallach and appealing performances by a cast of unknowns, has created a chilling sense of cinema-verité panic that keeps you spellbound and enlightened at the same time. The found-footage horror concept is usually restricted to tales of the supernatural, related after the fact. This is the first time I’ve seen it used to reveal an ecological catastrophe, showing the phases of a natural disaster and a government cover-up through multiple media sources, webcams, closed-circuit cameras, cell phone footage, news reports, video coverage by a rookie intern on a morning TV show on her first assignment and various victims whose goal is to tell the surviving world what really happened. The facts that emerge baffle the Coast Guard, the FBI, the Centers for Disease Control and Homeland Security. Your hair will stand on end. Read More
