Dark Knight
Starring:
Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron
E...
Review:
Heads up: a thunderbolt is about to rip into the blanket of
bland we call summer movies. The Dark Knight, director
Christopher Nolan's absolute stunner of a follow-up to 2005's
Batman Begins, is a potent provocation decked out as a
comic-book movie. Feverish action? Check. Dazzling spectacle?
Check. Devilish fun? Check. But Nolan is just warming up. There's
something raw and elemental at work in this artfully imagined
universe. Striking out from his Batman origin story, Nolan cuts
through to a deeper dimension. Huh? Wha? How can a conflicted guy
in a bat suit and a villain with a cracked, painted-on clown smile
speak to the essentials of the human condition? Just hang on for a
shock to the system. The Dark Knight creates a place where
good and evil — expected to do battle —...
Rating:
3.5 Stars
WALL-E
Starring:
Fred Willard, Jeff Garlin, Sigourney Weaver, John Ratzenberger,
K...
Review:
First image: the Earth as a garbage dump, a future reduced to
ruins. For the past 700 years, what's left of humanity has been
cruising the skies in a spaceship. Only a tiny robot,
WALL-E (for Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth class),
scoots around on urban terra firma compacting trash into piles that
grow into skyscrapers.
First sound: a voice lifted in song: "Out there/there's a world
outside of Yonkers." The tune is "Put On Your Sunday Clothes," a
merry ditty from the forgotten 1969 movie version of Hello,
Dolly with Barbra Streisand. WALL-E, his eyes like binoculars
(hell, they are binoculars!), watches an old, muddy video tape of
Dolly with the same yearning we see in Michael Crawford, who plays
a young store clerk at the turn of the 20th-century, warbling
about...
Rating:
4 Stars
Tell No One
Starring:
Francois Cluzet, Kristin Scott Thomas, Marie-Josee Croze, Andre
D...
Review:
Don't you hate it when critics review mystery movies and give away
all the plot twists? I do. So I won't reveal diddly about Tell
No One, except to say that the young French director Guillaume
Canet — channeling Hitchcock's masterpiece Vertigo
while working from an American mystery novel by the uber-clever
Harlan Coben — has fired off one terrific, twisty thriller.
Hot-blooded, haunting and packed with the pleasures of the
unexpected, Tell No One will pin you to your seat.
Francois Cluzet is a marvel as Alex, the widower pediatrician who
is jolted to learn that his wife Margot (Marie-Josée Croze),
believed murdered eight years ago, might just be alive. The acting
is uniformly first-rate, with special props going to Kristen Scott
Thomas as a lesbian married to...
Rating:
3.5 Stars
Hancock
Starring:
Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman, Adam Del Rio,
Jameson...
Review:
Would you buy Will Smith as John Hancock, an amnesiac,
grab-ass, booze-swilling superhero who flies under the
influence and disdains the punk-ass citizens of Los Angeles for
thinking he's a superasshole? Trust me, you will. There also exists
in L.A. a publicist, Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), committed to
making the world a better place. Now, that's pushing it. Director
Peter Berg has a feel for guys who screw up (see Very Bad
Things), and he mines the herky-jerky script for every toxic
glint of macho posturing. It's all hugely entertaining until the
final reel, when the film tries for a tragic dimension it can't
handle. Leave that to The Dark Knight. The actors save the
day. Bateman doesn't make a false move, and a stellar Charlize
Theron springs her own bolts from the blue as Ray's wife....
Rating:
3 Stars
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Starring:
Gary Hart, George McGovern, Jann Wenner, Jimmy Buffett, Jimmy
Car...
Review:
The good doctor is family around these parts, so cheers to Alex
Gibney (Oscar winner for Taxi to the Dark Side) for not
screwing up this mesmerizing documentary about the people, places
and substances that altered the mind and battered heart of the
Kentucky-born inventor of gonzo journalism. Johnny Depp, who paid
for the 2005 funeral in which Thompson's ashes were fired out of a
cannon, narrates with just the right mix of awe and impertinence.
Tom Wolfe, illustrator Ralph Steadman and Rolling Stone
editor and publisher Jann S. Wenner check in on navigating the
blurred line between fact and fiction that marked Thompson's
landmark writing. Family, including son Juan, fill us in on life
with the man who declared, "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol,
violence or insanity to anyone, but they've...
Rating:
3.5 Stars
Wanted
Starring:
James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Terence Stamp,
Thom...
Review:
Angelina Jolie is packing heat, and she's going to show James
McAvoy how to load a phallic pistol and shoot his wad. What's not
to like? Wanted is what I'd call a guilty pleasure.
Translation: It's trash, but I love it anyway. Brutal, sexy, built
to thrill and minus a scintilla of redeeming social value, the
movie — based on a series of comic books by Mark Millar and
J.G. Jones — explodes like summer fireworks. And the
detonator is Timur Bekmambetov, a Kazakhstan-born director whose
Night Watch and Day Watch are huge hits in Russia
and who is determined to hit Hollywood with the same pizzazz. Not a
timid soul, Bekmambetov, who cut his teeth in the ad game, knows
how to get a story going without pesky preliminaries.
In the first scene, a professional assassin kills a few
dozen...
Rating:
3 Stars