Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
Starring:
Joe Jonas, Nick Jonas, Kevin Jonas, Christine Quynh Nguyen,
Amand...
Review:
It is what it says it is, a Jonas Brothers concert film in 3D.
That earns the movie one star just for truth in advertising. I
doled out a second star because director Bruce Hendricks had the
taste to steal from A Hard Day's Night in the off-stage
scenes where the JoBros — Kevin, 21, Joe, 19, and Nick, 16
— scamper around like the early Beatles in an escape from
marauding fans. It's no mystery that the target audience for this
G-rated bubblegum fantasy is tweens, parents of tweens and the
occasional pervert. They'll be so pleased. Anything for the rest of
humanity? Not so much, though connoisseurs of camp will thrill to
the throbbing 3D phallic symbolism when the boys thrust their hoses
(the rubber kind used for garden work) right through the screen and
spray their...
Rating:
2 Stars
Last House on the Left (Remake)
Starring:
Sari Paxton, Tony Goldwyn, Monica POtter
Review:
Ten minutes into this puke-slick remake of Wes Craven's infamous
1972 revenge classic on rape, torture and murder, I knew this
crapathon would give Watchmen a run for its money as this
weekend's top box-office bell ringer. Such is the debased state of
American moviegoing barely three months into the new year, a time
when profits soar and taste sinks to sewage levels. Craven,
influenced by Ingmar Bergman's Virgin Spring and the
real-life Charles Manson murders, found creative ways to plumb the
dark depths of human nature. And he did it with no cash. Remake
director Dennis Iliadis, with a studio budget and a galling, glib
cynicism, is merely cashing in. So when a fate worse than death
befalls young Mari (Sara Paxton) at the hands of creeps, and her
parents (Tony Goldwyn and...
Rating:
1 Star
Sunshine Cleaning
Starring:
Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, Jason Spevack, Steve Zahn
Review:
Don't be scammed by the "sunshine" in the title. More than a few
dark clouds roll through this tale of two sisters, played with
comic zest and quiet desperation by Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, who
decide to make a living by cleaning up crime scenes in their native
New Mexico. Need to wipe guts and viscera off your walls? Call Rose
(Adams) and Norah (Blunt). Former high school prom queen Rose, a
single mom raising a precocious seven-year-old (Jason Spevack), is
stuck in life and in a shabby affair with a married cop (Steve
Zahn, reliably excellent). Norah lives with their cranky widower
dad (Alan Arkin, reliably Arkin) and yells out her frustrations in
screaming contests with trains. Why not earn fuck-you money by
wiping blood off walls? It may be a ticket out.
Sunshine Cleaning (the...
Rating:
3 Stars
Phoebe in Wonderland
Starring:
Felicity Huffman, Patricia Clarkson, Elle Fanning, Campbell
Scott...
Review:
You need to keep a keen eye on Patricia Clarkson. She's a
sorceress of an actress who makes wicked magic, be it on TV
(Six Feet Under) or stage (A Streetcar Named
Desire) and in movies from High Art and Far From
Heaven to Pieces of April, The Station Agent
and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Clarkson is at her brilliant
best in Phoebe in Wonderland. And that is saying
something. She plays Miss Dodger, a drama teacher who seems to have
dropped out of Alice in Wonderland. It's only appropriate,
since Miss Dodger is directing a class of preteens in a school
production of Lewis Carroll's rule-breaking allegory. "Jump," she
tells those students who audition timidly for roles. Miss Dodger
likes to leap into the wild blue. She must have learned it from
Clarkson.
Writer-director Daniel Barnz...
Rating:
3 Stars
Watchmen
Starring:
Matthew Goode, Carla Gugino, Jackie Earle Haley, Malin Akerman,
B...
Review:
Listen up, "Watchmen" virgins. I don't care if you know squat
about the orgasmically received 1987 graphic novel written by Alan
Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons: It's time to bust your
cherry. With its alternate universe of vigilante superheroes and
power-crazed U.S. politicians heading for nuclear disaster,
Watchmen took comic books to the next level as literature.
The film, directed by 300 wild man Zack Snyder, arrives after years
of false starts from the creative likes of Brazil's Terry
Gilliam, Bourne's Paul Greengrass and The
Wrestler's Darren Aronofsky. Even if you don't see Snyder's
version, which has its problems, it won't kill you to peek at the
comic book that Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof called "the greatest
piece of popular fiction ever produced."
As for you...
Rating:
2.5 Stars
Eleven Minutes
Starring:
Kelly Cutrone, Nancy Kane, Carson Kressley, Jason Low, Jay
McCarr...
Review:
It didn't grab me. Not at first. A documentary that tracks the
winner of a reality show — in this case Bravo's Project
Runway — after his victory. Huh? But Eleven
Minutes busts a few fresh moves.
For starters, designer Jay McCarroll — proudly gay, chubby
and opinionated — knows that his TV notoriety has earned him
mostly snubs from fashion elitists. And here he is determined to
put on his own show in Manhattan's Bryant Park, using plus –
size models, with the help of friends willing to work for free. The
Humane Society backs him for not using furs or leather.
But in the eight months it takes McCarroll to put on an 11
– minute show, he finds many of his ideas diluted. PR
advisers don't see room for a guy who says his designs are inspired
by "vaginal...
Rating:
2.5 Stars